The 2025 Bisarca Competition by Il Perdilibri has come to an end.

You know by now that the Bisarca Competition has become a pleasant tradition.

The theme chosen this year is water. 

I recommend you don’t miss the short stories: Silvia of Come cerchi nell’acqua, Luisa of Words and Music and Stories, Massimo of Orearovescio, Francesca of Tersite,  Camu of Due chiacchiere. 

The winner was Luca Manganelli’s short story: L’orologiaio (The Watchmaker), which tells of a very peculiar workshop.

And then there’s my Team 🙂

Incoming call for colleague already on the phone, hello, good afternoon, busy at the moment, can I help?

Voice-over and also a bit out of place: no no, come through, I’ll take it.

I is a charged mixture of verbal robustness and self-referential intensity. She likes everything she wants to follow to have her signature, so much so that she reconsiders the concept of marking territory.

Peculiar spectacles around a face stingy with smiles, black curls and that sort of eccentricity that oscillates between strictly trousers and mercifully never a suit.

Temperament expressed in colour combinations accompanied by flashy necklaces.

The curiosity to give an explanation to every single detail embedded in the nazi-grammar uniform, heavy with further various titles or further various titles, whatever.

Can I help and I have been working in the same office for two years of ups and downs, nervousness and biscuits, tension and self-learning.

At the top, but not quite at the helm, a determined good-humoured woman has arrived to counterbalance I, starting with the jaunty brown forelock that starts the downplay already from the look.

Determined is as prepared as she is competent, as friendly as she is skilful, as sober as she is contemporary.

Every day is Monday, every day the same dynamics repeat themselves as in a cyclic chain of relaunch manias, every day the roulette of the unexpected stops on problems, red or black, even or odd, big or small.

I and Determined never cross paths, they proceed like parallel tracks, chasing each other in bravura like horses on a merry-go-round.

I is maniacally habitual.

Determined improvises according to the situation.

I is fuelled by an inexhaustible vein of nastiness and pulverises.

Determined is at peace with all and contains.

Today’s Monday is taking a more critical turn than usual, the ball is spinning out of control: the incoming call is not in Italian.

I progressively flares up, sketches, rectifies, fails to understand, gets so fired up that she releases a burning smell.

Determined appears sparkling, even elegantly without mumbling, but the risks associated with the criticality of the moment lead her to overheat.

She offers the first response, which falls into the void like an arrow shot into the sea.

And still she overheats.

She proposes the second answer, which falls into the void like a feather escaped from a pillow.

And still she overheats.

She proposes the third response, which falls into the void like a plea for peace.

Determined is in danger of exploding.

I and Determined have forgotten Can I help.

Can I help is never the protagonist, her work is almost permanently out of the spotlight, but she is part of the team.

Can I help knows languages.

Can I help is like that element that nobody ever considers.

You can have the best blend in the world and the top of the range moka, but you cannot make coffee without water.