Thoughts of the End of 2024

Dhaka, February 2020

I’m rereading Marco Lodoli's short stories, a writer I love very much, and I’ve noted this phrase.


“And I also thought that the sea can fit into a bucket, if the bucket is burst, and that one day it can contain all life, if it’s a day broken by love.”

(Marco Lodoli, from “I professori ed altri professori”, Einaudi)


I think these are the most fitting words for me to close this year. Because he uses heavy terms like “burst” and “broken” to describe wonderful actions like containing the sea and the whole life. Perhaps the passing of time, the approaching birthday of fifty-one, the feeling that the body can’t hold up as before, but above all memory and mind aren’t as clear as they used to be, make me appreciate those heavy words.

Now I’m starting to think that remembering also coincides with forgetting.

Growing old is the art of forgetting.

As if space were now reduced and full and to insert new things, new words, new names, you had to necessarily erase something old.

So many books read, names of beloved photographers, song titles, become day after day a snowy field, where the thick white blanket hides everything that is underneath. And we know well what is underneath but without being able to see it we are no longer sure, we hesitate, until we let it stay under the snow forever.


Therefore I have no trouble empathizing with being burst and broken, but in this condition, it is also true that it is not madness to imagine being able to contain all of love like all the sea.


Precisely because the broken soul, the pierced heart, never fills up and always asks for it, devouring life and love.


Happy end of the year to everyone, wishing you a new year broken by love...

Italian version