"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."

Lettera

A friend of mine wrote me a letter.
Which is no surprise nor, in any way, unusual.
And still.

I know, letters are considered to be out of fashion, but I wrote letters in lots of important moments of my life and some of the most important friendships in my life were born out of exchanging letters.
I received some very important letters too, expected and unexpected, from friends, strangers and friends-to-be.
I’ve got a big wooden chest in my house and it’s filled with letters.
Believe it or not.

I’m talking about hand-written, actual letters.
Delivered by hand or by mail. But letters.
The ones that smell like paper and ink and wine, thoughts and tears, happiness, the ones with mistakes and slips-of-the-pen.
Those kind of letters.

And this was such a beautiful letter.
No introduction, no “Dear Chiara”. Straight to the point, like she is. Like a glass of good wine, like a sip of perfect whiskey.
As straight as they come, it was a letter about falling and being whole, being scarred but not being defined by the things life throws at you, finding your own strength. A letter about being your own human being, independent and brave, head high, tits up.
It was a letter I needed.

And while I step into Fall 2019, I cannot begin to describe the wonder that takes me in looking in the eyes of another human being and still being able to find beauty and wonder.
Thanks, my dear friend.

Son tornate a sbocciare le strade,
ideali ricami del mondo.

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Artificial Integrity in the Age of Anxiety

In 1947, British-American poet W.H. Auden published The Age of Anxiety, a long poem subtitled “A Baroque Eclogue”. In a nutshell, four strangers meet in a bar on Third Avenue in Manhattan, on All Souls’ Night, so it’s even seasonal, in the middle of a

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S.S. Van Dine’s The Scarab Murder

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