Let's call them coincidences

One Wednesday evening, I was texting a friend of mine. We talked a bit about identity, and I explained how we all (at least I certainly do) have many facets and how we can have different identities or personalities, as if they were clothes we change. She's a very special friend of mine, to whom I wanted to say a thousand things, but I didn't have the right words to encapsulate what I was thinking and feeling in a few effective sentences.

Thursday morning: I was cycling quickly through the city center when, out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed some stalls, perhaps selling used books, under the docks on Via D'Azeglio.

I passed them, running straight toward my destination, a little church I'd planned to photograph before going to work, but suddenly something told me to stop and go back, just to take a look, and so I did: I brake, turn around, and go back. I quickly scan the covers of the books on display, all two euros each, when a small volume catches my eye, undoubtedly because of its seductive cover: everything about the body and freedom fascinates me; the body stripped of its clothes is like a liberated soul, it is being in its essence, freed from the psychological constraints of appearance.

Well, instinctively I pick up this little book and turn it over: I am literally struck by the few words written on the back cover. They are exactly everything I wanted to say to my friend, they are the perfect summary of my thoughts and my vision. Those words contained an entire world, an entire situation that I am, perhaps we are, experiencing: they are exactly the words I was looking for! I had to get that book, I absolutely had to get those words to my friend... and so it was.

It's as if that book had literally "called" to me... we can consider them coincidences, if you like, but there are too many of them; events mysteriously intertwine with a meaning

"I was certain I was crossing that slice of earth whose extension and vastness varies for each of us, where we can experiment, where the winds of freedom blow swiftly, and there's no need yet to pretend, ignore, define forever, or erase. We try it on. Like trying on ten different dresses in a fitting room, while a complacent sales assistant waits to adjust them and see how they'll look in the mirror. Combinations and adjustments. It's the human beings we've allowed to approach in bursts of inner freedom that will define who we are, because it's from the skin of others that we learn everything there is to know about our own, and, after all, that's a great liberation."

For the record, I still have to read the book; for now, it's sitting on the shelf, waiting to mature, like the friendship in question. That same day, on a nearby stall, I found an interesting volume on the castles of Parma, printed in 1955. It's an interesting and hard-to-find edition; it cost a little more than two euros, but it was worth it. Used book markets are veritable goldmines in which to dig with your bare hands, searching for hidden gems and treasures. The very smell of books, their worn look, their yellowed color, the feel of your fingers on the paper, the sound of turning the pages—all physical sensations that are part of the pleasure of reading, a pleasure that no file or ebook will ever provide, in my opinion. The very idea that a book can be passed from hand to hand, from person to person, from house to house, fulfilling its mission: to carry a message, spread ideas, and touch people's lives... is fascinating.