Time of flowers

JB

Time of colours, of flowers, of life
time when exploding buds show their power
all around to everybody, to me
to my soul often sad, without memory

Time of deep blue, the deeper of ever
time of sweet breeze that tickles my skin
while reminding that all is made new
and that also I can be new, free

Time to arise once again, without sins
time when God shows His power of Love
time when we betray and kill our Lord.
Once again Resurrection. For ever

Quoniam tu illuminas lucernam meam, Domine
Deus meus, illumina tenebras meas (from the Ambrosian liturgy)

March, 30th 2024

Italian version

I’ve some flowers

JB

In the still sleepy green countryside
delicate whiteness spreads itself, where
blossoms of the plum trees now awake
are a wonderful hymn to a new spring

Even poplars are reddening buds
yet they spread a light bitterness scent
maybe foretelling the brevity
of each thing so fast passing in time

I’ve some flowers but they are now scarce
and my buds have turgours of old age.
Don’t let I yearn for you in this bed:
this night I hug you tightly and so close

March, 19th 2024

 

Italian version

Mara – Life is not a dream. Part 2

Pic from here

After all, a famous theologian, Romano Guardini, already said it well: In the experience of a great love, everything that happens is an event within its scope[1].

This is, ultimately, what we correctly call ‘love’, although its origin is certainly also an emotion, or it can be so, or at least it is often so.

Love is an impetus of the heart. It is an action of the heart, not just of emotion, not just of instinct, and it involves both emotion and reason. It involves our whole being.

Love is not suffered by resigning oneself to an instinctive passivity, however joyful. Love must be constructed.

Therefore, love is a fruit of a conclusion. It is not an end, it is not something that ends, it is not the death of emotion, on the contrary! It is exactly the opposite: it is a conclusion from which everything that follows originates and acquires meaning, significance, beauty, substance.

It is the choice of life, and it asks for everything.

It always asks.

It asks all the time.

Love to exist needs reality, needs a story.

Infatuation does not. It is consumed in an instant. It has no history and does not open a story.

So one cannot speak of love without looking back and remembering.

To confuse infatuation and love is like confusing a shooting star with the Pole Star: sure, they both exist, but they cannot be confused: the one, however bright it may be, has the duration of a flash. The Pole Star, in truth, even on the clearest nights does not appear as a star of the first magnitude but it’s small and dim, yet on this other the whole sky hinges, revolving around it almost as if pivoting.

Moreover, as every wayfarer knows, the Pole Star always points the path.

Without any ambiguity.

Love and infatuation can be experienced in parallel for a moment and only as long as there is no conscious comparison between the two. They have different purposes and both have their rights, so to speak, their functions, but these are very different and incomparable, incongruent. Love cannot be betrayed and infatuation cannot be denied, because it happens. It happens in spite of ourselves and that is all.

What really matters, once again, is to choose. To decide. To be. To be into it, consciously.

One can also phrase it otherwise: what really is important is to ensure that a crush is not a harbinger of pain.

For oneself and for other people.

Because illusions, even without taking on the consistency of a pathology, can kill.

Because life is not a dream, whatever Basil thinks of it[2].

Never.

And dreaming of it is a crime.

The end

Second Life, Gigli Isles, October, 19^th 2023

[1] Romano Guardini (1938), Das Wesen Des Christentums

[2] Calderon de la Barca, see above.

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Mara – Life is not a dream. Part 1

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A new idea slipped into her mind: was she trying to absolve herself?
Perhaps, was just this the meaning of her troubles and her consequent course of thought?
Did she want to remove a shadow of sin from her relationship with Mara? Did she first of all want to reassure herself about her own fidelity?
There was probably also such an ingredient in her reasoning: she might as well admit it frankly; however, that did not exhaust the argument.
Something similar had happened to her before, perhaps even with greater intensity.
She had been caught off guard by the sudden and overpowering awakening of emotions that had invaded and overpowered her, and when she had managed to curb and remedy them, immediately before something irreparable happened; the result had been a sudden awakening to reality, harbinger of pain.
Pain for herself, both because she had been disappointed in the expectations triggered by her instincts, and because she had to give up a relationship that was also intellectually fulfilling.
Pain for her friend, whom she had abandoned by making herself unavailable for many months.
Now, it was clear how disturbed she was, however, by Mara’s beauty, by her beauty as a person, and she did not want a repetition of the painful situation she had already experienced.
She had talked about all this with another friend, a wise and intelligent friend; she had discussed this subject with her at length, and she had pointed out further, enriching the matter with interesting arguments.
There was first of all the question of time: love always has its roots in the past, while infatuation – which can always happen – finds its spark in the present. Love and infatuation can coexist, but it is up to us to distinguish: emotion alone does not exhaust us, it does not take possession of us, except – possibly – for a brief moment.

Whereas love is a starting point, the origin of everything that will happen, on which our lives depend entirely, infatuation … a crush … has a completely different nature and consequences: infatuation has neither past nor future, it does not generate a story: it is, in fact, the flame of an instant, and only there does it burn, however enthralling and exciting it may be.
Love is something that must be constructed, rather than perceived. Better, perhaps: it must be constructed after its first perception, after the first cue. It must be assembled, it must be chosen with all one’s being. To exist, to be there, it must be constructed from pieces of things, of thoughts, of memories, of perceptions (even emotions, of course, even an infatuation, perhaps) that have already happened.
That have occurred.
Which have occurred, therefore, in the past.
All this, all this taken together is defined, composed, fixed, stabilised, crystallised into something solid, something enormous. Into something eternal. In something that demands everything and nothing less.

An infatuation strikes us by random chance, instead love must be chosen. And we must choose. To be volitional. Reasoning about things.

To be e continued …

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Mara – Like Alice. Part 2

Pic from here

Judy thus thought that it was probably in such a context that we happen to confuse infatuation with love, despite the fact that the two have so little in common.

Because infatuation, in fact, is a kind of unforeseen accident and has little to do with love.

“Love”: this word is so misunderstood, misused, overused and wasted, when it should be employed with care, caution, trepidation and modesty.

Out of all the inhabitants of this world, she had chosen only one and only for that person she used and continued to use the word ‘love’. Because that person had saved her life, not only metaphorically, and that was when, of all people, they had chosen each other.

That was the source of her discomfort, even with Mara. She liked Mara very much, yet she did not dare to use the term ‘love’, because it was not right. It was inadequate: no matter how numb and distracted her mind might be by her senses, she saw how different the reality of things was and her loyalty was therefore out of the question.

On the other hand, she felt attracted to Mara: this was undoubtedly true.

As she had often done, Judy thought again that the bottom line, perhaps, is that we too often confuse emotions with something far more complex and composite, which we traditionally, in our culture, call ‘heart’. The heart: the fundamental core of our humanity, of our being, of our person.

The heart, where both intellect and instinct, or rather: rationality and emotion, coexist and are connected.

Thus, while an infatuation pertains only to the emotional sphere, love involves the whole person: his or her heart, precisely.

For this reason, and not out of defence or moralism or malice, she warned Mara not to use the word ‘love’ in reference to the two of them. She asked her not to use that word but another: ‘friendship’. It was, after all, a question of respect for the truth of things, of respect for reality. It was about not distorting reality and not looking at it through the distorting lens of emotion alone. It was a matter of calibrating one’s gaze and awareness through the mediation of reason and its capacity for discernment.

It was a matter of living in that given instant, just in that present and quite in that given place, at that beach and not in that distant, mysterious and confused horizon, where everything and each thing could have been. Where the vagueness of the place and, above all, its remoteness and therefore its unknowable substance could give the dream the flavour and consistency of reality, of truth.

To be e continued …

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Mara – Like Alice. Part 1

Pic from here

Judy had to admit that she was troubled: her thoughts, or rather, part of her thoughts seemed to contradict her. Was she wishing for an impossible love? Was she dreaming of it? Was she longing for it? Was her desire for sweetness and tenderness actually pointing to something else?

Was she betraying her Love?

She decided that further investigation was necessary: ignoring a problem is not the same as solving it, and the subject matter of that problem was serious, or could be it.

She had to deal with it. She had to do it now. So, brutally, sincerely, with a shudder, Judy wondered if she had a crush on Mara.

She closed her eyes.

In her mind the caress of the waves still resounded sharply, but at the same time she was aware of the dismay that that vast, blue, flat surface aroused in her. Moreover, she also felt a sort of attraction and fascination for that distant, yet blurred, undefined, indefinable horizon… she felt captured, almost sucked in.

Trapped in a blurred vastness. She wondered if Mara too, as she gazed absorbedly who knows where, was locked in the same cage.

She perceived Mara’s breathing as a faint whisper and the movement of her chest continued to rock her gently. Fragments of memories of her early childhood coagulated into something wistful, nostalgic: into a kind of regret of lost intimacy and tenderness.

It was reassuring to be there.

It was beautiful.

Now, as had happened to her on other occasions, she felt a bit like Alice, when the little girl literally plunges into her own dreams.

Like Alice, she sometimes felt that she was detaching herself at least a little from reality and dreaming, releasing or even unleashing her emotions, under the overpowering impulse of the desire for sweetness and tenderness, for peace, for serenity, so that she felt good. Of course, she also did so under the impetus of her own instincts. That day, with Mara, it had happened again.

It had been like when, in March, the air is crisp and a gentle breeze caresses her face, revealing the incipience of spring and new life; then, all her senses are sharpened and even her flesh is aroused, renewing hitherto dormant turgor and old desires. So it could even happen that she felt attracted to someone, perhaps when a girl flattered her by telling her that she found her pretty, that she liked her, so much so that she foolishly thought she was really beautiful or, at least, interesting. Sometimes, especially at night and in her dreams, she would even turn on herself by fantasizing about particular eroticisms, so to speak.

Her conscience, however, was able to recognise the real nature of those moods and when that happened, she felt very weak and fragile. Foolish, indeed.

She mentally returned to the focal subject.

She was aware that she inhabited a very strange world, a world gone mad. A world gone mad and often populated by mad people. Yes: we inhabit a world that too often confuses fantasy with reality, so that fantastic, perhaps wonderful scenarios are approximated to real prospects, real opportunities. Dreams and desires are increasingly exchanged for facts and the immanent concreteness of situations. Opinions become truths. Cravings become rights.

The confusion between dream and reality was by no means new in the history of mankind, although it had never occurred with the intensity and pervasiveness of this century. The most striking example was perhaps given by Calderón de la Barca[1], when he described the fantastic life of the imaginary King Basil and his family. A series of dramatic vicissitudes leads the protagonist to feel with dismay the futility of all human experience: only death is certain, while all life is but illusion, a dream.

Cervantes, an illustrious compatriot of Calderón, was absolutely not of the same opinion; he fought in the battle of Lepanto, and lost a hand; certainly also for this reason he was well acquainted with the realities of life. In his monumental Don Quixote[2], Cervantes describes both the old Don Quixote’s getting lost in the fantasies generated by fairy tales and books, and the absurdities that the noble knight himself stubbornly goes through, steadfast in his convictions and illusions. It is only in the last moments of his life that Don Quixote finally understands and admits the hollowness of his own life, built on the vain and insubstantial foundations of dreams, and thus he reconciles himself with factual reality. Don Quixote’s unhealthy passion for chivalric novels forces his poor mind to completely misrepresent reality, including his supposed love for Dulcinea, a poor peasant girl that his illness transforms into the magnificent princess to whom he swears eternal love.

Existentially, therefore, nothing new had been discovered, even though television, films, mobile phones and social media made it increasingly difficult in the 21st century to distinguish between reality and fiction.

[1] Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1635). La vida es sueño.

[2] Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1605-1615). El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha.

To be continued …

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Mara – The friend. Part 4

Judy was then seized by a strange thought, by a probably unseemly curiosity: she was wondering if she knew that person, the one who worried Mara about the so feared abandonment. It was as if she herself had an uneasiness deep inside her. Judy mulled it over, struggling to find an appropriate description; the term ‘jealousy’ was certainly unsuitable, excessive, exaggerated, and yet it remained there, planted in her brain, without her could find a better one. She had to confess that Mara’s connection with another person, in some strange way, bothered her. She felt like a fool. A possessive fool, at least on an emotional level. She felt so, even if rationally she hoped and wished that the two could find each other and get back together again.
She had redeemed herself from these ultimately silly considerations and resumed saying:

“I really am a dead end for you.”
“Why do you say that? A dead end?”
“I don’t want to open you up to disappointment, I don’t want to hurt you. You know we will never go further. You know that I can only be your friend. I told you at once, when we met, that I am in love and that my Love lies elsewhere. You know that I would offend him and my freedom by even thinking of betraying him and you know that I will not. Never.”

” You are my friend and that is much to me.”

Mara had yawned. She looked tired.

“Do you sleep little?”
“Yes.”
“Thoughts?”
“Not particular ones; I wake up and can’t go back to sleep.”
“It happens to me too. I often wake up between 4 and 5 am and then struggle to get back to sleep.”
“Exactly.”
“I hate this: I like sleeping so much. But see how strange I am? Before you made me tender and I wanted to comfort you, but now it’s me who feels cuddled.”
” When you are alone you don’t feel bad.”
“No, it’s true: I am often alone. You don’t feel bad alone, but you need others. I alone suffocate in sadness … when I wake up at night, the only chance to fall back asleep is to be embraced. If he hug me, then I fall back asleep.”
“A hug is important.”
“Yes. It is a manifestation of acceptance. To be accepted, to be welcomed: that calms me.”

They had said their goodbyes and gone about their business, but they had met again at that place, by the sea, later. Now she was curled up like a child on Mara’s body, cradled by the movement of her breathing, in turn sustained and remarked by the faint sound of the surf on a flat beach.

Her thoughts ran to the words she had just read on the Internet. Words that had struck her: ‘I am centred in the current of now’. Those words were accompanied by a photograph of a small river, photographed from within a forest. The whole composition was a little longer:

“Here at this river bend
the past is behind me, the future in front
and I am centred in the current of now”.

The exhortation to live in the present, because only the present exists, had always accompanied her, and now a woman from faraway Canada claimed to be centred in the ‘now’, in the ‘now’ and to follow the flow. Beautiful. Enviable.
But what was her ‘now’? What was its meaning?
What place did Mara really have in it?

To be continued …

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Mara – The friend. Part 3

A deep silence followed Judy’s last words and she found herself to imagine that was a purring cat, cowering as she was. Satisfied. At peace. After all, cats need very little to reconcile themselves with the world.

Earlier, in the morning, knowing that Mara was recently victim of an emotional disappointment, she told her that she should give people time. In fact, Mara was often very impatient. Mara convinced herself that she was once again alone. Judy objected, replying to Mara, that only a few passed days since Mara’s last meeting with her love, and so that anything could have happened. She said also that Mara could not yet draw any firm conclusions. However, Mara was sure that she had been abandoned and that she, anyway, would never know what really happened and why.
Mara was prettier than the last time they had seen each other: her hair was now very short, black, and looked great. Smiling, she told Mara that she was always fluctuating: lovers, hair, clothes… everything was always changing, both appearance and situations, as though Mara was still looking… as though she was still looking for herself and then trying to change, to change herself… as though she was going by trial and error looking for satisfaction. Searching for herself.

Mara confessed to her that she was a restless type and admitted that perhaps that judgement or, rather, that impression was not far from the truth.
Judy went on, looking at her gently, and told Mara that she was also being hasty and that, indeed, she should give time to things and also (above all!) to people: there are times, circumstances and rhythms that must be respected, unless one never holds on to anything and burns everything, affections included.
Judy then spread his arms wide, saying:

“Come here, come on. Precipitous, impatient, restless. Hug me.”

She kissed her cheek, adding:

” Do you know what? Not everyone always harasses you…”
“What do you mean?”
“Mara, you always seem to be in the trenches. Even I have to watch carefully what I say with you.”
“Exaggerated!” Mara laughed.
“Mara, listen to me: in your own way, you are extremely demanding; I say in your own way because you and I are very different and I am also demanding.”
“I know. You are too smart not to be demanding.”
“Probably, now, you Mara consider this hug time wasted.”
“No… why would that be?”
“Maybe even dating me, is time wasted for you, because you imagine it as forwarding into a dead end.”
“Absolutely not. I wouldn’t be here otherwise. Nor would I have followed you.”
“Did you follow me?”
“Yes I did. I read your works, I listened to you, I went with you to your friends, I let you bring me to exhibitions and events… and I was fine with you. I’m fine with you.”
“Well… you are making a pass at me…”
“At you?”
“You don’t? I’m not saying anything negative: let’s say you wanted me to like you.”
“Yes. Surely.”
“You wanted to be nice to me.”
“I’m nice to everyone, or I try to be so. Above all with people of value.”
“You are an interesting person: very mysterious, but interesting.”

To be continued …

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Mara – The friend. Part 2

Judy laid with her eyes half-closed, savouring at the same time the sad and the sweet sensation of all that melancholy. Her right cheek was resting on Mara’s chest, her hands close to her shoulders. Her head moved slowly and smoothly, following the rhythm of her friend’s breathing: in that position Judy clearly perceived the regular flow of air that carried life into Mara and this delicate sound overlapped chorally with the pulsations of her heart. Of Mara’s heart, of Judy’s heart too. In short, their life rhythms relaxed and merged into one.
Judy perceived not only immediate physical pleasure, due to the cozy closeness of another person, of a dear one, to the contact with her skin, to her warmth, to the softness of her flesh, to the sweetness of that innocent self-surrender. There was something else, there was more; it was clear that the physical contact was an occasion, metaphor and indication of a different, non-physical commonality.
They were two souls close together, in a tender intimacy without any guilt.
Her head moved slowly, in rhythm with Mara’s breath, but Mara’s breath was the breath of her life. It was her life itself, literally. It was the rhythm that kept Mara alive, the rhythm that made Mara alive. It was Mara’s life and somehow Mara was sharing it with Judy and likewise Judy did: Judy was part of it. Mara’s life, partially, very partially, was shared.
They were still, more than relaxed. Judy, after a sigh, opened her eyes and stared at her friend’s chest: her large, round, firm, full, beautiful breasts were swaying. Judy was fascinated by that movement.
No: there was nothing perverse or improper about that situation. Judy was not simply staring at Mara’s body, yet at her life. Better: her physical life, dress of her spirit. Through it she was looking at her soul.

They were about to be joined by another friend. An irregular and fast pattering, which denounced the uneasy tread on the stone of heels, in fact warned them.
The third friend, seeing that scene, let out a wry joke about that tenderness… a mischievous joke, and said:

“Mara always tends to show off herself.”

Judy was almost offended by that actually harmless jest and reacted with a violent, resentful tone which first and foremost astonished herself:

“Yes, I like her! I like her and the chest following the wave of her breath makes her more alive.”

Mara looked at her softly and smiled:

“Thank you, Judy.”

The third friend added, perhaps alluding to unknown pasts:

“Mara always tends to prevaricate.”
Judy: “No… why do you say prevaricate? Rather ‘prevail’, or better ‘distract’, because she is beautiful and beauty tends to overpower.”
Mara: “I don’t prevaricate anyone.”
Judy: “No, Mara. Exactly. Moreover, honestly, I’m thinking of something symbolic, like – pardon my roughness – warm, soft flesh being carried away by the spasms of the spirit. By the breath of life, the breath that is life.”

Mara stared at her:

“This is beautiful. I like to be an inspiration to you.”

Judy resumed:

“From the breath that is life. And if you place your head on it … a cheek … it cradles you.”

The third friend thought a little, then she said, more seriously:

“Yes. I believe that in every balanced human being there must be a little white and a little black. A girl must be a little bit saint and a little bit devil. I’m not judging you: you are normal, that’s it.”
Judy: “No, not at all. I reiterate that there is no malice in what you see and anyway I am sure that if I were holy, I would be the best me I could be. Because, as I say in a recent text of mine, I would be what I was created to be, that is, I would be myself. I would be free.”

The third friend: “You can’t be completely saint or completely pervert: opposites go together.”

Mara seemed to agree with the third woman and said thoughtfully:

“It takes balance otherwise all is lost …”
The third friend: “Otherwise extremist culture is born.”
Judy: “You are wrong, forgive me. These are my words, the ones I meant before:

When I see
naked my soul
as poor ghost
almost diaphanous

Then I know
I’m a proud selfish one,
full of anger and dreams
filled with
fear to die

When I feel
weird my body
while it changes so fast
into old wrinkly stuff

Then I know
all my arrogance dies
while my time runs out fast
and this year like a single day lasts

When I am
soul and heart and mind too
simply me despite flesh
that now falls

Then I know
what I should be:
what You thought when I was”

After it, Judy added, almost didactically:
“What You thought when I was, that is: what You, God, thought when I was, that is why I exist, why I was made. The real me is coherence with that reason; it is the explosion of my every potentiality.”

To be continued …

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Mara – The friend. Part 1

This text is merely development of other words I already shared some weeks ago. Here I tell why I wrote those words and what happened chatting about them with some friends. This work starts as a short novel but evolves into a sort of essay about what love is. Above all in the second part of this text and in its translation into English, another friend was very important and she could be considered a cowriter here, yet she prefers to not have her name involved and of course I respect her decision.

I hope you’ll consider this stuff  not too boring.

Mara and Judy, that day

So sometime I’ve a crush
and I dream about it
when it’s dark, in my nights
sighing too.
Thus, I know I am weak

From: Like Alice, by Judy Barton, 2023

The next time Judy saw Mara again, she was alone, seated on the cushions of a large wicker armchair, on a stone-paved terrace near to the sea. The armchair and the whole terrace led their gaze to the distant horizon, there, beyond, where however the sea seemed to have no end or boundary, as if the air were gradually melting into it or, on the contrary, as if the water were rising to the sky, ever more rarefied, however mixing the two identities.
The sinking sun was slowly lowering beyond that blurred point, adding gold splashes to the far panorama.
Mara saw her approaching and stood up to greet her.

Judy liked to dress simply, in comfortable clothes: so, she wore completely ordinary jeans, a grey T-shirt she found at a public poetry reading and sneakers, which she alternated with her black, almost heel-less ballerina flats. She liked to feel free, and indeed there was certainly ostentation in such her almost demure dress. She was not tall, but her legs were muscular, made so by her habitual frequenting of mountain paths and trails. Her hair was black, straight and always kept in a bob, but recently she gave it, a blue colour: it happened after she had impersonated a girl in an online game: this voluptuous yielding to something she thought made her younger and prettier had been inevitable; nevertheless, thinking about it, she felt a little silly and yet at the same time satisfied and perhaps even proud.
Mara was completely different: she was pretty, indeed! She was definitely beautiful and she knew it. Because of this, she often liked to dress provocatively. She was tall, and that day she had an almost dark look, with very reduced, black, elegant shorts. A sort of blouse, also black and not completely buttoned up, sleeveless, left her belly free and did not completely cover her chest, showing her neck and the junction of her superb breasts, above which she had a black tattoo. She wore shoes, also black, with a high heel and was adorned with necklaces, bracelets and rings. Her hair was also black but very short and wavy, not like Judy’s, and showed her ears, from which rather showy but well-made earrings hung. Her eyelashes and eyebrows were very well groomed and her lipstick was definitely dark, almost black. Her fingernails were perfect and painted a dark, matte red. Those dark hues provided a pleasant contrast to her fair complexion and her smooth, supple, young skin.

Her gaze was intense and everything about her made that woman really desirable.

Judy was a friend of Mara, “just” a friend, nothing else. Nothing more. Their friendship was everything. That was all there was to it: so it was and so was going to stay.
That definition however, all of a sudden struck Judy now. She wondered why, in cases like this, it was natural to add a “just” to that phrase. Just friend. Just. Nothing more: “just”. As if that lowers a bar, and if so, rightly so. As in “justly so”. As if it describes the nature of a relationship better, while there is no need to.
As if to be just friends were little.
Regret? Does it imply regret? No, no regret. No.
At most a little disappointment because of a forgone or missed opportunity and therefore a probably disappointed emotion. Perhaps that.
In any case, life is made of choices, of dichotomies, like a cladogram. One thing, one choice, each of her choices, often excluded another possibility and triggered a divergent path. She had chosen years earlier and her Love was elsewhere. That was a clear and conscious choice made at an earlier fork, way higher up in the hierarchy of the cladogram.
There are forks in the road, you pick one direction and the other one vanishes as you move on – without pomp & circumstance, not even worth a footnote. The one you pick, continues to reset. Along with its dedicated environment and natural habitat.
So, no: any regret.

It had been a strange September and now October was even stranger, more than mild. Warmer than usual, but with blue skies. Deep. Deep blue skies. The air was dry and its warmth pleasant as it caressed the skin without any discomfort.
No, that October seemed to have no intention of sinking into the gloom of autumn.

All this went through her mind as she followed Mara who made it back to her seat and who was all in thoughts, or, at least, it seemed so to Judy.
She approached Mara and stood behind her, until to touch the back of the armchair with her belly. Judy felt the armchair between them gently press her belly at any movement of the friend.
Judy perceived that the unusually mild climate was however lead them to the impending autumn. This feeling, together with the vagueness of the horizon, difficult to pinpoint exactly, and with the light play of the armchair on her belly, made her prey to a wave of melancholy. She was invaded by a sort of languidness, soon overlaid with a longing for peace and gentleness; she gently brushed Mara’s hair with one hand and then slowly slid down her cheek and shoulder.

Judy walked around the armchair without thinking, without speaking. She walked around the seat and curled up on Mara’s lap resting her head on Mara’s chest. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to go lost in the silence of that tender embrace, of that almost childlike and soft and cozy embrace. She felt herself quiet.
She did all that without thinking or premeditation. She “just” did that.

Mara said nothing. She again gazed into the horizon, on the sea, and she seemed lost in them, as to search for someone, something or at least a handhold, an improbable handhold. Maybe a hand reaching out to her out of that abyss – even if such a reach-out was improbable, and unlikely to say the least.
She seemed scanning for an impossible handhold on that deserted, endless flat expanse.

That October seemed to have no intention of sinking itself into the sadness of autumn.
Autumn: where things end.
Autumn: when everything gets worse, and then the festivals and village feasts break out. As if to chase away the awareness of the inevitable.
Almost to forget that the leaves that are no longer green, no longer alive but reduced to mush.
The leaves of November, now close to come. The dead leaves.

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