When my father died I didn't go to his funeral. I received my mother's phone call in the middle of the night. I cried. Then I got up, went to the bathroom and saw her.
In the mirror of the cabinet. Who was that girl with all black eyes?
I got closer and I didn't believe it. Who was that person over there? It was the same as me but it wasn't me. Those weren't my eyes.
Then I went back to bed and slept.
The next day I remembered what I had seen in the bathroom mirror but I didn't want to tell Marco so as not to worry him.
My mother called before breakfast. He started giving me orders on what to do, how to dress, what to say in church. She always wanted to check everyone out. But I told her I wouldn't go. So she started shouting the usual things: that I was unworthy, a rebel, that I had no heart, that I would end up in hell...
And I unplugged the cell phone and then turned it off.
I wanted to hear my father's voice.
My father, good, sweet, affectionate.
He never shouted.
Sometimes I try not to remember how my father died. Sometimes, however, I hear his voice that still asks me how I am. My father always asked me how I was.
My mother never asked me, on the contrary she told me that I should have died and not my father. Sometimes I try to forget certain bad words from my mother.
I light a candle, light incense, pretend he's home and wait to celebrate something with me. I miss him very much.
My mother was always there to draw fashion sketches, perhaps for this reason I don't like fashion. My father had a passion for watches in his spare time.
He liked to fix broken mechanisms, stood with the magnifying glass and tried to fix them. It was good to see those miracles and after all they were ticking again.
It was magic and I was a child and I looked at him as if he were a magician.
She hopped down the path, turning around and lifting her long skirt.
"Father, why are we going to the mine?" he asked, looking up at his parent.
"King Alras has requested our presence on a secret project." the man answered, leaning on the walking stick with his metal hand. "What do you think it will be, Pareia?"
The little girl adjusted her skirt and observed that it fell well especially where the bodice left her free. She stroked her long, dark curly hair and shook her head.
"You know it, father." she replied with a smile.
The man went up to her and ran his hand through her perfumed hair, bending over to give her a kiss. He remembered well the gnome in a jacket who had knocked on his door and had brought the message, waiting for a short reply before returning to the shadows, as well as the urgency of the text. He also remembered when, many years ago, King Alras himself had given him that mechanical arm he was now wearing to replace the one he had lost in the collapse of the mine.
"No, Pareia." he resumed walking along the path. "Since we said goodbye ten years ago, I haven't heard anything about them."
The walk continued in silence, while the trees shaded the slightly uphill path. He paused to look at the marks on the trunks that indicated distance in the gnomic language.
"A little girl was running in the woods ..." Pareia began to hum, crossing her hands behind her head. “He fell into the cliff and broke his leg. "Oh, what a pain, what a pain" ..
He gestured for her to show her the direction and set off.
It didn't take long for the trees to give way to bare rock and stone doors as tall as a human. Numerous figures had been intertwined in the doors which merged into each other and hid numerous small cracks.
"Mr. Veltis!" called a voice from the other side.
Quietly, more quietly than Pareia had ever thought, the doors opened and allowed her to see a long, wide gallery decorated with oil lamps and gigantic statues of gnomes.
Ahead of them was a gnome with short red hair hidden partly under the charcoal tuba and strutting in the suit of the same color.
"We have been waiting for you."
"My sincere apologies for the delay." his father answered politely, while Pareia stood silently behind him and kept his head down.
"No, don't worry." retorted the gnome. "Follow me."
The group went into the gallery.
"His Majesty is waiting for us at the station at the end of this tunnel to present the project to you himself." he continued, with the pride that transpired from his voice. "Our most skilled scientists and craftsmen have been at work for years and the prototype has been in use for several months. From now on we will no longer be dependent on the use of magic for even the simplest things. "
Mr. Veltis smiled slightly. The magic… for him, too, his arm was magic, pure and simple magic from the hands of the gnomic artisans that he would never know how to replicate.
Pareia looked at the gnome statues. The features were rougher than those of the people he normally met, but even in the stone the clothes sparkled with gems and even the details of the fabrics were carried over with absolute precision. He saw the last pair of oil lamps pass by them and in a moment they found themselves in absolute darkness.
Silence filled every corner of the shadows and they stood still.
Only the beating of their hearts thundered in their ears.
The beating of many hearts.
A flame seemed to shine in the distance and suddenly the light blinded them. They closed their eyes. The light grew stronger. The thunder of the drums. A fanfare. Roar of many voices.
Pareia lowered the arm she had instinctively placed in front of her face and narrowed her eyes. The cave was brightly lit and in front of them were two carriages, the first of which was very strange. He looked at it carefully, seeing that it had some sort of chimney from which steam came out, and the carriages were set on rails.
"Mr. Veltis." a gnome much more robust than the others, with clothes rich in gold threads and well finished, stood next to his father. "I am delighted that you have accepted our offer." he turned to the carriages. "This is the project we wanted to tell you about."
My father, from when he got up to when he went to bed, only opened his mouth to say nice things to someone, something and to the whole universe. If a pen dropped from his hands he was unable to get angry but it was said that it was necessary. I am giving this example because the majority of people today are not at this point. They are like immature and grumpy parrots, they keep repeating how the world is falling apart and do not understand that they are supporting it as well. All they do is talk, shout, feed and get angry. If you know chronically irrecoverable people and can’t get away from their shit, look for any solution to recharge yourself. It is no longer time to reach out to them with empathy and understanding. What hangs over everyone’s heads is a much heavier test than the shit that others drag around and continually throw up on others. Today we need the utmost clarity and inner consistency to face the game. Remain silent and reflect on your situation. Do something but no need to scream. Doing something for others is a silent and beautiful action. These angry people suck the lifeblood no matter if they are aware of it or not. Raising the defenses, not just immunity, is a sacrosanct right that belongs to you and which you must take note of. Anger is contagious and therefore we must detach ourselves from those people who have hatred for everyone and everything. (I am referring to the anger of the dull, not to a physiologically normal emotion)
I was walking with my father, when suddenly he stopped at a bend and after a short silence I wonder: "Besides the song of the sparrows, do you hear anything else?" I pricked my ears and after a few seconds I replied: "The noise of a cart". “Right - he told me. And an empty cart ". I asked him: "How do you know it's an empty cart if you haven't seen it yet?" He replied: "It's easy to understand when a cart is empty, since the more empty it is, the more noise it makes". I became an adult and even today when I see a person who talks too much, interrupts the conversation of others, is intrusive, boasts of the talents he thinks he has, is bossy and thinks he can do without others, I have the impression of listening to the voice of my father who says: "The more the cart is empty, the more it makes noise"
The Camino de Santiago is the most famous pilgrimage in the world, a route made up of a series of itineraries that, starting from different places in Spain, Portugal and France, allow you to obtain the Compostela, the forgiveness of sins. A unique and exciting experience, to be done alone or in a group, on foot or by bike, the Camino de Santiago is an opportunity to rediscover yourself, challenge your physical and psychological limits, discovering some of the most evocative places in Eastern Europe. A father sets out to understand why his son has decided to take this journey. What will he find out about his son and himself?
A wonderful classic that teaches and talks about a life in solitude. An Arturo protagonist in his narrating self, an Arturo who becomes a star among his animals and a star will also become a star for the reader who will not easily forget him. Arturo orphan of his mother, grows up with an absent and practically misogynistic father. Arturo tries to grow and while he tells the story his maturity reaches the reader, because even when he is a child, the young man already has to do it himself when he is a child. Elsa Morante, immense and poetic, calls him several times a forastic Arturo and it is precisely the idea and flavor that this reading emanates. The human essence made clear and wild before the blessed reader. Genuine, atavistic, sincere. Arturo is loved, but so is Nunzia, also Salvatore and even Wilhelm and all the protagonists; everyone has a role, everyone is part of the Moor, as is his Oriental Tent. The island of Arturo was awarded the Strega Prize in '57 with its story that leads the reader to a job in search of himself, following in the footsteps of Arturo in his difficult oedipal overcoming of his father. Immense and stellar. A masterpiece that leaves its mark.
It's true I often burned my paintings, notebooks, books, I burned to forget that I was an artist. To forget the power to create from nothing. It was exhilarating, demeaning, tiring, it was destructive to me too. But my life was fire, fire lit every day. Now there is not even the ash left. I have burned souls, I have burned whole nights, burned words and loves. All together incinerated in a moment of sublime beauty. The green fire.
My green fire guided me. It was night, it was day and for me it was always life. But it doesn't burn forever. Eventually we turn off.
Eventually the coal becomes blacker. Very black. You find it in the walls, inside your inner walls, and you always get dirty every color you try to trace on your door. But Black crosses the threshold, reaches you, takes everything, burns you completely.
She was the one in the photo, holding a bouquet of flowers and a red hen’s crest on her head. It was she who acted among the frightened girls. Hamlet hadn’t hesitated either in his gestures or in his voice. And she continued to play a role that was not hers: the good girl who goes out of her way to meet her father’s expectations. A studious pupil, a caring daughter. Never any drift or dangerous friendship. Never any friends who are too annoying or a boyfriend who is too jealous. Never any of that. Only music and art, mixed with the tears that often bathed his pillow. He loved his mom and dad. He went out of his way to make them happy. And her little sister also loved and often played with her and never teased her. Growing up he had kept that naive and innocent look, that beautiful vivacity of one who has not known evil. Yet Hamlet knew evil from an early age, when a man took her innocence. Her nightmares were frequent and she did not know who that man was and she could never see his face. Maybe it was the shadow that appeared in her paintings or maybe she lived next to it without knowing that her executioner was the one who fed her. The executioner was always present. The executioner who had destroyed her at the age of 4.The needs of an artist are different from all those of others. Of course an artist eats, sleeps, goes to the bathroom. He may have things and people he cares a lot about. May have interests and hobbies. But one thing distinguishes him profoundly from all other people: the need for stimulation. An artist feeds his art from himself and from what he sees, knows and experiences. Visual, mental and empirical stimuli are deeply necessary for every artist because in the absence of these his creative lymph dries up. In fact, if an artist is not put in the conditions of being able to have these stimuli that satisfy his needs, he will slowly fade away. His imagination, not being nourished, will become dry and will find it difficult to give him the input for artistic creation. Just as an animal dies in its instincts if placed inside a cage, an artist dies in his creative life if he is put in conditions that are not favorable to the expression of his artistic talent. Fantasy is like a plant and must be fed with the water of stimuli. If these are lacking, the substance for dreams is missing. It lacks the energy itself to create other dreams and other works. So for this reason it is sometimes said that an artist cannot live life like the others and the same things that others are enough cannot be enough for him.
Conrad. The good heart of Tenebra. How I loved Lord Jim !!! It was a happy time in my life. The only one. So, I can tell you that many words are beautiful but then it’s not that easy to find happiness. Especially if at 4 you found yourself a man who pushed one knee to your chest to rape you. Continued abuse for years has devastating consequences for a child. I have not eaten since 4 years. I ended up with injections and infusions. I no longer opened my mouth. Nobody understood what had happened to me. Then I unlocked thanks to my paternal grandmother and a hen, who became fond of me and made me understand that not all beings on this earth do harm. So as you can see I’m still alive and I owe this to the art that saved me by allowing me to express the immense anger and pain I had inside of me. I survived but at what price? I would have preferred that he had killed me because carrying death within him is even worse, you know. You often feel desperate. You fall into bad hands again. You get up and fall back and suffer. Until one day your father dies and you look in the mirror and suddenly you see your evil twin living violently. And so you become the executioner. But that doesn’t make you feel good either. Neither love nor pain can defeat the death that man made you suck. And what do you do? Therapy is done. You try everything but nothing is needed. There’s always that monster growling inside me. And I scream but nobody hears me. Nobody saved me that day.
You humans struggle to chase after idols and desires that do not satisfy you and do not sedate your true needs. Because your essence is of different substance and your heart is different element. In vain you rage around goods and food for your matter forgetting that you are not here to live forever on this planet but you are only passing through and you will only stay here for a fraction of time that you cannot decide. Your flesh is troubled and your heart is tormented by things that do not belong to your spirit. You are part of that light which does not divide worlds but unites them. Unfortunately, you have forgotten the wonder of your light and mistake day for night. Ù Your feet get tired in exhausting paths to follow ideologies and religions that do not give you any benefit and joy. Your eyes get tired of reading sacred works that do not make you better. What miracle are you still waiting for that hasn’t already happened? Your waiting is full of useless expectations as you are ready to go but you remain still and cannot think that you can be other than yourself and what others see of you. Open your hearts and realize that you are not alone and that the light is already with you, you only have to accept it in the love that the Father has given you as the only and supreme strength to reach his Kingdom. You are strong, you can expand your essence and join the infinite energy of which all of you are made. Forget the matter that limits you and become aware of yourself and your divine love.
THE PRODIGY OF IDEAS 