But we, after all, are all works of art. We are art when we tie the long hair that covers our faces in a ponytail or when we listen to that song that makes our wrists tremble and makes our eyes water. We are art when we dance, alone, in an empty room, following a music that runs through our veins and makes us feel free. We are art when with our tears we write poems on our cheeks, on our arms. We are art when we fall asleep over our favorite book or stay awake, late into the night, with a thousand sighs stuck in our throats and open cuts on our skin that burn, lashed by the air, relieved only by the vision of the stars, which burn, in the freezing January sky and we, enraptured by their beauty, just want to shine with them, like them, away from that cold balcony where we stare at them. For us the universe is art. The planets are art. The stars are art. Not us. We who are scribbles, intricate, twisted tangles, made on dirty and damaged sheets. Yet if only we could see each other when we talk about who or what we love. Our eyes shine with a light identical to that which the stars give off. And it is not a reflection, it is not external to us, but internal, it is hidden in our heart. Because we are nothing but simple fragments of fallen stars that have never lost the strength to shine. We are art.
“I don't have time”: how many times have we repeated this phrase or heard someone say it?
The main reason we don't have time is that we accumulate so many possessions, affections, obligations, desires and ambitions that we feel compelled to dedicate ourselves to it every single day.
Having a home, a job and lots of friends, for example, will greatly reduce our free time. This is because possession enslaves us, leading us to act out of obligation, not out of choice.
Let's imagine for a moment that we have to move to another city: how many goods would we like to take with us, and how many of these will we have to do without to prevent the suitcases from exploding?
The essential lives within each of us, in our memories, in our thoughts: the essential is ourselves. Everything else is pure selfishness to which society has accustomed us since we were little.
You don't start over, just like that ... straight away.
Like one morning you open your eyes and magically you have forgotten everything.
No, that's not how important changes work.
It starts again in pieces.
One morning you opened your eyes and a piece of that anger went away; then you lose a little bit of interest the next day and the next day you wake up again and start thinking about it after lunch, it's no longer your first thought in the morning.
The questions, those you never lose: what you lose is the desire to know the answers.
You start over one piece at a time, so at the beginning you seem to always stay where you are.
But don't worry: a little bit of that weight you carry on you is gone even today.
If there is one thing I am learning from this life it is not to cling to people. Trust me when I tell you that your parents, however obsessive they may be on certain points, are and will be the only people you can really trust. Acquaintances, friends, loves, each person is just passing through and when you believe you have met one who seems to be the exception, you will soon learn that it will turn out to be like all the others. Your parents will be the only ones not to wear a mask towards you, they will be the only ones who will tell you the truth in your face, no matter how badly it can do, but you will soon learn that that truth is a reason. And I am learning this the hard way. But there is still someone more truthful than your parents, and that is God. He is not a belief, he is not a religion, he is not a person or a being told by a church. He is alive and real, he is present in your life and in all things on earth. He is, and has never forsaken you. He is nothing of what man has told; learn from yourself to know who God is and His character, and as far as I am concerned, I can only show you the ways, the ways on how to know Him. God is with you, no matter what your life is like, God is on your side, in every mistake you make, He was always there with no judgment and always will be.
I will not let these tears go to waste
I will use them to water the most beautiful of gardens
And give you that smile that shines like the sun
Because you are both stormy and peaceful
You are strength but also a lot of fragility
Like petals and thorns
Now you are rain but soon you will become rainbow
Each color is an emotion
Beautiful and happy
Ugly and sad
Like the keys of a piano
Black and white
All make up the symphony of each day
A different melody every time
But this is called living
In recent years I have made bad choices, choices that have led me to live a life that is not what I wanted: as children we all imagine how we could be tomorrow, but we will never know for sure if what we want will come true, but we can do everything possible as long as it happens. I didn’t do it, I saw grown-ups and I wanted to be great too, all too fast, all in a supernatural way. I didn’t have to do it, I didn’t have to grow up so fast, I wanted a normal life, to be a girl like any other, yet I ruined everything. If I could go back I would change everything, I didn’t think I could say it, but that’s the way it is. I’d be hypocritical if I said I’d do it all again, no. Usually it doesn’t happen, usually I would do what I did, but not this time. This time I would like to live it, life, this time I would really like to be happy. This time I would choose me, me and me again. But there is no going back, and I can do nothing but tell you to really enjoy life, to the full, it might be worth it and you might not regret it. Don’t be frightened by what might happen, rather, make sure you never have to wonder what might have happened. Just make it all happen.
We are little flowers that are not seen, we don’t have sparkling makeup, gorgeous dresses. We are simple flowers, little souls in the midst of life. Tiny breaths of a moment of infinity. We are small flowers that grow asking for nothing. It is enough for us to have the sky above and the earth below us.Have you ever stopped to observe the wildflowers? Have you ever reflected on the beauty of colors, their shades which not even the most daring painter would be able to reproduce? In their apparent simplicity, wildflowers hide a great pride, a strength and a determination that leads them to stand up among others without anyone having asked for it, without anyone having sown, watered, wanted them. I admire them for their tender beauty, their colors and their spontaneity. Simple and yet each of them to see well is perfect and wonderful in his being. Sometimes I feel like wildflowers, one among many, simple, but with that simplicity that hides a strength that only those who want to look beyond appearances can find. Fair and modest like wildflowers. Shy yet sure of her own worth like wildflowers.Have you ever appreciated the beauty of a wild flower? I love them. They don’t have a well-kept garden where they can show off their beauty. They have no loving hands that take care of them. They don’t have a long life to be admired. They grow in inaccessible places and bend to the elements of time. But they are tenacious, bold. And on their slender stem they will blossom again in spite of those who do not find them beautiful and those who are unable to appreciate their scent. Isn’t that a nice way to describe women? Women who, like a wildflower, always show everyone the strength to be reborn after one or a thousand difficulties.
There is always an anchor. A detail that we keep. A voiceless message. A stain. A harmless visual detail that remains detached from all the pain. A light that survives a farewell. An image that passes directly from the transience of the moment to the fixity of memories. An image that becomes for us a vehicle of the hidden indexicality of those we have loved.
That image accompanies us over time. We recognize it from the contours even from a distance. It flickers in us like the flame of a candle but does not seem to go out. Even his absence becomes unthinkable. Every time we try to turn it into a shadow and let it go, its melancholy and circular appearance triggers an emotional return in us. As if by magic, the image re-emerges, appears before our eyes and forcefully reaffirms its presence, unraveling in a tangle of blinding lights that remind us of the subject of our love.
I too have kept an image of you, immersed in the yellow glow of the Sisto bridge lamps, suspended in the glow of those lights like a small fire that, regardless of the wind, continues to burn.
Occasionally, that image is briefly visible; others, it spreads out like a bright patch of sun with defined contours, edging the animated streets with its light. There are times when it skilfully camouflages itself in pools of water with yellowish reflections, times when it swings gently in rounded shadows and times when it spreads out in numerous irregular stripes, branching as far as the eye can see and casting its light even on the sharpness of the stones.
Every single time, however, your image brings up at night everything that remains hidden during the day: the clear light of a love that, like a golden sky, continues to survive the uncertain shadow of its sunset.
What survives the time?
There is always something that is saved from the storm of pain that has permeated the air and walls, which acquires its own serenity. Something that saves you from oblivion. A piece of home, of intimacy. A peak reached to be contemplated from another angle. A narrow space of time that saw us helmsmen ready to orient the ship's keel without being satisfied with making it float. A tune with long notes to hum in moments of nostalgia. The light of a window lit in the evening that cloaks the indistinct space and continues to reassure us, reminding us of the place that saw us happy. A non-place of light-heartedness that expands in the imaginative waves of our mind and survives time.
A love does not enter and exit the soul like a puff of smoke. A story does not lose its reason for being. It relives in the solidity of the small details embedded in the visual composition of memories. In all that is permanently fixed somewhere within us. In the colors of a snapshot recorded by the eyes that we occasionally try to refocus. In the dense and throbbing juice of the sensations that survive forced removals, they awaken any day and appear inexplicably strengthened. In the ink drawings full of erasures and smudges of our mistakes. In the irrational eruption into the monotonous flow of the days of a thought or an image that immediately brings us back and makes us wince. In the dazzling manifestation of the dotted figure of someone we have loved who, at times, we superimpose on a stranger, believing we recognize him.
- What remains then? - I wondered several times, continuously.
The vibration remains to witness what we have experienced on our skin, to touch the deepest chords unexpectedly. The body does not forget. There remains the shadow of a love that never disappears completely.
Inside us, the echo hovers. So inside me, your memory remains not plundered by the continuous current of days. Relive intact in the invisible real of my mind. In the sharp contrasts of still images that do not fade with time. In the chaotic alternation of the clips of our dialogues. In the suspensions of the unspoken. In the clear net of words that have pierced the barriers of our rigid closures. In the muffled silences. In the prolonged apnea of a total immersion in the high waves of emotions. In the grafting of an encounter whose roots cannot be eradicated by the advance of existence. In the spontaneity of gestures hidden from the gaze of strangers. In the verses intertwined in the musical score of our love. In the interlude between the beginning and the end of a story, the authenticity of a love remains. The time of that love within us.
A girl was waiting for her flight in a large airport lounge.
Since he would have to wait a long time, he decided to buy a book to kill time.
He also bought a packet of cookies.
She sat in the VIP room to be more quiet.
Next to her was the chair with the biscuits and on the other side a gentleman who was reading the newspaper.
When she started taking the first cookie, the man took one too, she felt indignant but said nothing and continued reading her book.
He thought to himself "But look, if only I had a little more courage I would have already punched him ..."
So every time she took a biscuit, the man next to her, without a single sign, took one too.
They continued until there was only one cookie left and the woman thought "Ah, now I just want to see what he tells me when they are all finished !!"
The man took the last cookie and split it in half!
"Ah, this is too much" she thought and began to snort and indignantly took her things, the book and her bag and walked towards the exit of the waiting room.
When he felt a little better and the anger had passed, he sat down on a chair along the corridor so as not to attract too much attention and avoid other sorrows.
He closed the book and opened the bag to put it inside when ... when he opened it he saw that the packet of cookies was still whole inside.
She felt so much ashamed and only at that moment realized that the packet of cookies like hers belonged to that man sitting next to her who had shared his cookies without feeling indignant, nervous or superior, unlike her who had snorted and even she felt wounded in pride.
THE PRODIGY OF IDEAS 