What is real, is not true

At least, not in all the cases.

The journey is the destination itself and I am supposed to become an explorer. I am supposed to be the one who will say: it is beautiful. I ought to be the one who opens the eyes to watch the dreams. I will not run away from myself, I was trying it for too long. The mythology caught me in its’ very heart. It came from the land of Etruscans and sewed into me.

I came home to defend my thesis and move wherever the life will tell me to move. I am still at the crossroads but I think this state will take some time and I might still be there in twenty years. I had a neighbour once who was an artist, a painter. He was in his fifties and he was still asking me in which way should his art go because he was not sure of it. At this point, I understood I cannot keep on asking myself where am I heading to but I should just go for it, whatever it is. It is sure that the asking part of life will stay with us forever and not all the questions will change. There is no reason to push yourself. And definitely, we cannot let anyone else push us. The only reason for moving should be a breeze we suddenly feel, coming from nowhere, which chills our heads and strengthens hearts.

The truths should be always repeated. That is why we keep on reading the same fairytales.

The hurtful and the hopeful

The discoveries that I make stay with me. I try to focus on a beautiful moment, giving to it all my body and heart, being there where the magic happens. Just being so your hands can shiver, your eyes can fill with tears, your cheeks can become red, you can get goosebumps and your mind can take you into the beautiful dimension of reality which seems to be taken out of a fairytale. Because we can live in a fairytale. None of them was created without a reason. They are descriptions of the memories of the people who came here before us. Nothing only surreal can ever touch your soul.

To live, we need feelings. But the real ones. We need love and violence. We need classical art and the creepy modern performances.The world has to move.

Last week two Colombian boys were singing to me and my friend their country’s love songs. I let my body and soul give in to the sound of guitars, Spanish language and the atmosphere of the night slowly becoming a morning.

The other day I came back to a public garden and I realised that when I was there for the first time, I was thinking that at this time of year I will be probably already out of Milan. I remembered also how breathtaking the garden seemed to me and how magical looked the pollen floating in the air during a sunny October day. The garden seemed to me to be taken out of another world which touched me for a few moments and invited to its mystery.

I thought of a French boy whom I met already three years ago, who was kissing me after we left a party of our common friend. Who took me to a club and was teaching me dancing. I remembered his hands, his voice and his smile.

The only thing we need is to let ourselves open the great bridge between us and our world. Feel it and taste it. And never let the hurtful destroy the hopeful.

The loss of Eden

The mind of the child is always captivated by the idea of hidden beauty or lost riches. He dreams that he may discover some forsaken garden or a cave filled with rare treasures. Perhaps it is that he is born with a sense of the loss of Eden. Some lose that sense and search no more for their secret gardens, but for others, it can become a quest for the Grail.

– L.T. C. Rolt

One of my first childhood memories, which begins to seem more and more important to me with every year passing by, is the garden. As a child I had a lot of appreciation for bugs, especially butterflies, telling everyone that one day I will become a lady butterfly which probably meant that I’d like to study entomology. Nevertheless looking for these small creatures with my mom’s little guidebook in hand, was, as I see it now, more about truly getting into the garden.

In this continuous adventure to the faraway land awaiting me in my own garden, I was often having a feeling of foreknowledge which C. S. Lewis describes in his autobiography as joy.

It is difficult to find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton’s ‘enormous bliss’ of Eden (giving the full, ancient meaning to ‘enormous’) comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what?…Before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse… withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased… In a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else… The quality common to the three experiences… is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again… I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and Pleasure often is.
― C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life

This foreknowledge happens to me still from time to time but not as often as I was experiencing it as a 6 years old child. What’s inquisitive, this time of my life is also connected with a comprehension of death. I was very ill, the doctors were even suspecting cancer but fortunately it turned out to be something curable. Nobody actually was ever talking with me about death but the knowledge of the end of life kind of grew in me naturally.

 I always had also a very strong feeling of being connected to some other world, space or person which nowadays I consider as a kind of suspicion about the previous life. I don’t know if I believe in reincarnation and if this presentiment has anything to do with the age of my soul but I feel that I must be a very old creature. A creature which is still being summoned to come back home.