Mille innamoramenti
(One thousand crushes)
Before love comes attention. Attention, and the sense of wonder: the open gaze that allows the other to enter.
This is why children have an extraordinary ability to fall in love.
When I searched my memory, with paleontological patience, for all the times I fell in love, I realized that for the most part it happened when I was a child. Deep down it was obvious; but I had never taken such an accurate census. I found and wrote more than a thousand crushes: people, places, books, characters - even though I know that many escape me; it’s like trying to gather the sparks of a fire.
This force that burns and moves the world is our divinity, the primordial light. A perpetual source of sweetness, but not only that: love also has teeth, it suckles and devours. In its name – for another, for one’s family, for one’s land, for something of which one declares ownership, in general – blood and tears flow.
In the midst of such ferocity, a gaze open to the wonder and to the infinite beauty of nature is in itself a source of love and comfort. Happiness can be as small as a few centimetres, it can last the immeasurable time in which a memory lights up and takes us back to a good smell and the warmth of the sun coming through a kitchen window.
This is what we truly possess: the ability to pay attention, a heart that beats and can spark, and imagination.
