LA PIETRA CANTANTE – THE SINGING STONE

LA PIETRA CANTANTE – THE SINGING STONE

I thank very much Laura who immediately fulfilled the wish I had expressed, making me discover The singing Stone

Threepenny works for four cats” could I not immediately fall in love with this book necklace?

IMAGAENARIA is an old-fashioned bookshop, as less and less are found in Italy … the presentation looks like the beginning of a fairy tale and I honestly still am enchanted when I read these things and I feel grateful for the precious recovery of unjustly forgotten works of literature from every time and country.

Vilhelm Bergsøe who I discovered a frequenter of the Caffè Greco in Rome as a member of the Scandinavian Circle was a zoologist and in his book a meticulous and dedicated attention to Nature in all its aspects.

While I was reading, I never stopped imagining Laura intent on her translation work:  which must not have been easy at all and for which I can only congratulate her endlessly.

I don’t know about you, but very often, reading books by foreign authors, I do not dwell sufficiently on the scope of the work of those who translate, which undoubtedly plays an essential role.

It is far from simple in fact to recreate the same atmospheres that the author generates with his completely personal way of writing and to keep faith with the original writing style.

Writing is the painting of the voice.

I believe that this quote by Voltaire contains the essence of what level the necessary competence must reach to translate “painting” into another language.

Among other things, The singing Stone is very rich in detailed descriptions of the environment and vegetation, with names of plants that I, for example, did not even know.

A book that has the power to carry the reader on the same path to discover a part of the island of Ischia known only to those who were born there, and who have handed down the stories of their ancestors.

An exploration in nature, but also in time, among the legends that I particularly love and which reunite natural phenomena with the history experienced by the people, in a complete immersion in the magical atmosphere of the place.

Obviously I don’t want to completely reveal the identity of the singing Stone so as not to spoil the pleasure of discovery, which I advise you not to miss.

Rather, we will reconfirm my highest esteem to Laura.
Again and again thank you!

SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT

SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT

Imagine you sit down and pick up your favorite book. You look at the image on the front cover, run your fingers across the smooth book sleeve, and smell that familiar book smell as you flick through the pages. To you, the book is made up of a range of sensory appearances.

With an opening like this, what do you think?

I was immediately attracted to it and continued reading:

But you also expect the book has its own independent existence behind those appearances. So when you put the book down on the coffee table and walk into the kitchen, or leave your house to go to work, you expect the book still looks, feels, and smells just as it did when you were holding it.

Have you ever thought otherwise?
Where is this question leading us?
If I had not “spoiled” through the title, I would almost leave in suspense curious about your answer.

The article, which I recommend you continue here is titled “Is Reality a Game of Quantum Mirrors? A New Theory Helps Explain Schrödinger’s Cat.”

Also thanks to a quote from the new book by Carlo Rovelli it is about this theory useful to understand in a very simplified way the concept of the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics.

Off course this information always comes to me from Massimo, because I am rather in chaos already considering only one dimension … yet in this case, even a less brilliant mind like mine can grasp this concept in a basic way.

Research from Yale University has been published on Nature mainly by Zlatko Minev according to which it is possible to predict the quantum leap and therefore to know before opening the box.

But regardless of this I would like to dwell on the idea of two different opposing versions, yet both true.

The cat is alive and dead at the same time.

A bit like a sort of extreme take on the famous Sliding Doors.

Finding myself in a particular moment of life, with the aggravating circumstance of being a chronic indecisive, I will inevitably have to make crucial decisions.

Are you resolute or recriminating?
Do you attribute events to chance, to fate, or do you ever think that something could have gone differently?
The typical question what if… is it just a mental journey for you?

Are you a fatalist or would you rather be able to close the lid of the box to save the cat?

SOLSTICES COMARI AND TAROTS

SOLSTICES COMARI AND TAROTS

itsIn recent days I have crossed various thoughts, starting from Gabriella‘s post on the Water of San Giovanni but also on the rite of fire to become comari, not in the sense that I had so far given to this word.

Therefore, water and fire.
Water and fire that according to Cicero “are not of more universal use than friendship.”
Water and fire, two of the four elements of life.

The water and the fire that the druids define Litha that is the light of the shore because the fire, or rather the sun, which has reached the zenith and has reached its maximum point, plunges into the waters, on the beach, at the meeting point between land and sea.

Of the summer solstice, which Alidada explained masterfully in her Uno spicchio di cielo, I fell in love many years ago reading Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd who, starting from the ice age, sees the birth of Stonehenge which in my imagination goes far beyond the status of “ringing rocks” for example, and is covered in mystery with that aftertaste of legend that I love.

But returning to Litha, I would like to resume a little the concept of Samhain: moment in which the veil between the two worlds is thinner, but moving the contrast between “above and below” just like a celebration of the opposite, which of course I love. It is no coincidence that Litha is also defined as a day out of time.

In this reversal, it is as if the elements of fire and water overturn their roles in a magical union.
A suggestive image representing this magic is realized in the floating candles.

Fire, water.
Bonfire and dew.
Waves and fires.

This is how Shakespeare in his A Midsummer Night’s Dream describes the reply of a fairy:
Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire.
I do wander everywhere
Swifter than the moon’s sphere.
And I serve the fairy queen
To dew her orbs upon the green.

Fire, water.
Sun and moon.

And then I remembered the advice QueenFaee Studio gave me in the comments here where sun and moon draw inspiration from the Visconti Sforza tarot cards, just to point out the curious coincidences, and my connection with the land …

This short film by Garrone for Dior enchants like the magical floating of the stars under the marvelous vault of the Tuscan castle of Sammezzano which, exactly as if inverted upside down, leads them to float in the water of the fountain.

Maria Grazia Chiuri wanted to give a reinterpretation of the tarot cards by transporting them into a fairy-tale but also an artistic dimension, in which the precious embroideries and the refined textures of the fabrics give life to works of art: living paintings, which not only allow themselves to be observed, but drag on a journey in search of answers.

The first dress, among other things, struck me: leaves on lace, a sort of mixture of fashion and nature that not by chance I immediately found magical, and that made me think in particular of the tree in the photo under the title, with its dress of ivy, because Nature dresses wonderfully.

But perhaps my absolute favorite is Le Pendu.

At this point you will tell me “but what does all this have to do with it”

In reality, by crossing traditions, legends and fairytale atmospheres, I would like to interpret this summer as a series of cards that can offer a reading key that allows the re-appropriation of the magic of feeling aligned with the sun, ready to welcome the light.

And you?
What do you see or predict in your cards?
Water, fire, or what else?

PS: in the comments the Keep Calm version of Le Fou … or an upside-down creature who wants to be a comare, who is not silent like a cicada, who accumulates like an ant and who knows how to be heavy as a stone, but also loooong more “suspended” than Stonehenge laughing

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