the nights are beautiful and missiles cross the summer sky. for a long time,
perhaps since time began, the eyes of our tribe, these poor trachoma-inflamed
eyes of ours, have been gazing at the sky: but especially since new celestial
bodies began to cross the starry vault above our vilage: jet planes with white trails,
flying saucers, rockets, and now these guided missiles, so high and fast you can't

see or hear them, but in the sparkle of the southern cross, if you look very hard,
you can pick up a sort of shiver, a tremor, at which the most expert of us say:
'there, a missile passing at twenty thousand kilometres an hour; a little slower,
if i'm not mistaken, than the one that went by last Thursday.'

i too, sitting at the entrance to my hut, look up at the stars and at the rockets
appearing and disappearing, i think of the explosions poisoning the fish in the sea,
and of the courtesies those people who decide the explosions exchange with each

other between one missile and the next. i'd like to understand more: certainly the
will of the gods is made manifest in these signs, certainly they foretell the ruin or
the fortue of our tribe...

the words above are quoted from a beautiful story written by my favourite italian
writer, italo calvino. the story is called 'the tribe with its eyes on the sky'. i put this
little calvinism' in my diary as another white pebble in the daily stream of my notes,
for no reason at all. let us not comment on anything.

the world may lack peace and harmony, but beauty is always around.
it does not go away when missiles come.