Photo Diary

PHOTO DHIARY

I am not a photographer, nor do I have the artistic inclinations to define myself as such, having never seriously studied to become one.

Therefore, I admit that I understand very little about telephoto lenses and photographic techniques, as I have always relied only on my eyes and the self-timer capabilities of my cell phones to produce good photos.

What has always distinguished me since I was a child was my natural ability to stop and observe, to stare dazedly beyond things, thus surpassing the appearances of the moment, to develop my own pleasure in grasping the small details of what surrounded me, and then wanting in some way to preserve such precious fragments of life in my memory.

At the same time, over time I have also cultivated an innate ability to recall some phrases or passages from books that I had read in my youth, and then let my mind, and especially my unconscious, suggest to me, as in a boiling of ideas, which of these maxims could best describe what my eyes, my only true 'polaroid', had decided to capture as travel snapshots.

Below, I leave you with some of the photos that immortalize the memories of my adventures around the world, hoping that their viewing and reading can evoke in you the same magic that bewitched me in the moments when I decided to take them.

GALLERY

"You will end up finding the Way... if you first have the courage to get lost."

Tiziano Terzani

"Does the song of the sea end at the shore, or in the hearts of those who listen?"

Khalil Gibran

Children laugh an average of 400 times a day, while adults only 15.

The right question is not 'Why are you laughing?' but 'Why aren't you laughing anymore?

"A house without foundation will not last for centuries".

Sardinian proverb

"You think you have a limit,
So you try to reach this limit.
Something is happening!
And immediately you manage to run a little faster,
thanks to the power of your mind,
to your determination,
to your instinct,
and thanks to experience.
You can fly very high."

A. Senna

"They asked a wise man a question, saying, 'Of the many famous trees that the Most High God has created tall and shady, none are called azad, meaning free, except for the cypress, which bears no fruit; what is the mystery behind this?' He replied, 'Each has its own fruit in the season appointed, during which it is fresh and blooming, and during which it is absent it becomes dry and withered; the cypress is not exposed to either of these two states but remains always in flower; and of this nature are the azad, the independents. Do not set your heart on what is transitory...if your hand is full, be generous like the date palm, but if it offers nothing to give away, be an azad, a free man, like the cypress'."

– Saˁdi, The rose garden, XIII sec. –

"Everything, seen from up there, was different, and that was already entertaining."
"Whoever wants to look at the earth well must keep the necessary distance."

Italo Calvino – Il barone rampante.

"Think about this again," I said. "If he, coming down again, were to sit back in his place, wouldn't his eyes be filled with darkness, coming suddenly from the sun?"

Platone – Politéia

A teacher gathered his students and asked them, 'How can we know the precise moment when night ends and day begins?'

When, at a certain distance, we are able to distinguish a sheep from a dog,” said a boy.
"Indeed, it can be said that it is already daytime when, at a certain distance, we are able to distinguish an olive tree from a fig tree," replied another student. "These are not particularly convincing solutions." "What is the correct answer, then?" everyone asked.

The master said:

"When a stranger approaches and we mistake him for our brother, ending all conflict. This is the moment when night ends and day begins."

I am like the flowing river - Paulo Coelho

One day, Gilgamesh's best friend, Enkidu, died.
Gilgamesh sat beside his friend's body for days, watching it, until he saw a worm emerge from one of his nostrils. Horrified, Gilgamesh decided that he would never die. In one way or another, he would find a way to defeat death. He embarked on a journey to the ends of the universe, killed lions, battled scorpion-men, and even found himself in the underworld. There, he cut to pieces both the stone giants of Urshanabi and the ferryman of the river of the dead, and found Utnapishtim, the last survivor of the primordial flood. However, Gilgamesh failed in his quest. He returned home empty-handed, mortal as he had always been, but with newfound wisdom. He had learned that when the gods created man, they had decreed that death was his inevitable fate, and man had to learn to live with it.

"Here in Athens we believe that happiness is the fruit of freedom and that freedom is only the fruit of valor.
"I proclaim Athens as the school of Greece, and that every Athenian should grow up developing in himself a happy versatility, self-confidence, and readiness to face any situation. And that is why our city is open to the world, and we never turn away a stranger."
"Just like this, we do it here in Athens."

Pericles - Speech to the Athenians, 461 BC.

"Traveling on the Indian Ocean.
I have often wondered what Magellan's adventure must have been like, traveling from Spain all the way here, accompanied only by the voice of the wind.
Every now and then, some unknown island appears in the distance.
The ocean has an intense blue color, reminiscent of its depth.
I wish my soul could follow the peaceful rhythm of the waves."
Travel journal - November 30th, 2019.

A Mexican legend tells that in very ancient times, the feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl lived.
He was a good deity and had taught men all the wisest laws.
To defend the borders of his kingdom, Quetzalcoatl had to leave, entrusting his wife with an immense treasure made up of all the riches in the world.
In Quetzalcoatl's absence, the capital of the kingdom was attacked by enemies, who tried to force the princess to reveal where the treasure was hidden. But they couldn't succeed.
The loyal wife was killed, and from her spilled blood grew the cocoa plant, whose fruit hides a treasure of bitter seeds like the suffering of love.
When the king returned to his city and discovered that his wife had died, he wanted to give men the plant that had been born, so that the sacrifice of his beloved princess would be forever remembered.
Poor Quetzalcoatl fell ill from the pain of losing his wife and drank a potion that a sorcerer had prepared for him. But instead of healing, he went insane.
Shortly after, he bid farewell to the people who had faithfully followed him to the ocean. Finding a raft, he fled to the high seas where he disappeared, promising to return one day to rule his kingdom again in joy.

It's not necessarily true that the road less traveled is a dirt road;
for someone, it can be a highway.

Robert Frost was right, taking the road less traveled can make all the difference.

Matthew McConaughey – Greenlight

Bedouins love to tell legends.
One of them tells that there was a young mare with a black coat that lived on the moon; from her love affair with the golden stallion of the sun, an immortal foal was born, with a coat of gold and a mane and tail of black. It would have accompanied the Nabatean kings along seven hundred years of history, making them invincible.
It is said that it is precisely his magical neighing that can be heard on nights of the new moon, when the stars fill the sky above the mountain range that surrounds Petra.

"Since we don't know when we will die, we are inclined to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps 4 or 5 times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless."

Paul Bowles - The Tea in the Desert

The world is made of stairs, some go down and some go up.

Proverb

"Finally, with little sleep and lots of reading, his brain dried up and went completely crazy."

Don Chisciotte, Miguel De Cervantes

The Persian poet Rumi recounts that one day Muawiya, the first caliph of the Umayyad dynasty, was sleeping in his palace when he was awakened by a strange individual.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"I am Lucifer," was the reply.
"And what do you want here?"
"It's already time for prayer, and you're still sleeping."
Muawiya was amazed. Why was the Prince of Darkness, the one who always craves the soul of men of little faith, trying to help him perform a religious duty?
But Lucifer explained: "Remember that I was created as an angel of light. Despite what happened to me throughout my existence, I cannot forget my origin. A man can go to Rome or Jerusalem, but always carries the values of his homeland in his heart: the same goes for me. I still love the Creator, who nourished me in my youth and taught me goodness. I did not rebel against Him because I did not love Him; on the contrary, I loved Him so much that I was consumed by jealousy when He created Adam. At that moment, I wanted to challenge the Lord - and it was my downfall. However, I still remember the words of blessing that were once reserved for me, and perhaps by acting in a good and fair way, I could return to Paradise."

I am like a river flowing - Paulo Coelho

There is no happiness for those who do not travel, Rohita!
With enough time spent in the company of men, even the best of them gets lost.
Get on a journey.
The feet of the traveler become flowers,
His soul grows and bears fruit
And his vices are washed away by the fatigue of traveling.
The fate of those who stand still does not move.
It sleeps when everything else is asleep.
And it sleeps when the other is asleep, and it wakes up when the other wakes up.
Go then, travel, Rohita!

– Brahmana –

"It came to my mind, like when I was a boy going to school, I would walk on the sidewalk trying not to step where the stones matched. If I could make it all the way, I would have a good chance of doing well on an exam or writing a good essay.
I later saw other children in other parts of the world doing the same thing.
Perhaps in every person there is a primitive, instinctive need, from time to time, to set limits for oneself, to challenge oneself with difficulties, and then feel that they have "earned" something desired."

Tiziano Terzani

I read a story about Chuang-tzu, a Taoist master from the 4th century BC:
"There was a man who was afraid of his own shadow and horrified by his own footprints, so he tried to run away from them.
But the more he lifted his feet, the more footprints he left, and the faster he ran, the less his shadow left him. Thinking he was going too slowly, he ran even faster without ever resting, until he died from exhaustion. He did not understand that to make the shadow disappear, he had to stay in the dark, and to stop leaving footprints, he had to stay still."

Chandra Livia Candiani

"Can I tell you something from when I was a child?
Go outside, smile, take a deep breath.
You're alive, idiot!"

Vivere la vita – Mannarino

When he finally managed to concentrate a bit on his reading, an old man sat down next to him and tried to strike up a conversation.
"Where are you from?" the boy asked the old man.
"From many places,"
"No one can be from many places," replied the boy.
"Then we can say that I was born in Salem," said the old man.
"And what do you do in Salem?" he insisted.
"What do I do in Salem?"
The old man burst into hearty laughter.
"But I am the King of Salem!"
"People tell rather strange things," the boy thought.

The Alchimist – Paulo Coelho

The cloak of the past is made with the fabric of our life's emotions and sewn with the enigmatic threads of time. Generally, all we can do is wrap it around our shoulders to seek comfort,
or we can drag it behind us as we strive to move forward on our path.
But everything has a cause and a meaning. Every life, every love, every action, every emotion and thought has a reason and a significance. And sometimes we are able to see them.
Sometimes we see the past with such clarity that every stitch of time reveals its purpose, the message it holds.
In everyone's life - regardless of whether it is lived in abundance or poverty - nothing brings more knowledge than failure, and more clarity than pain.
And in the tiny, precious wisdom that we gain, those feared and hated enemies - pain and failure - have the right and reason to exist.

Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts

"I'll tell you a secret and it's simple:
Play, just play!
You lose a lot of games,
Win some and study a bit.
Then, as if by magic, chess will start coming to you."

Ken Smith

The boy remembered an old proverb from his country:

"The darkest hour
was always the
one that came just before the sunrise.

The Alchimist – Paulo Coelho

"I had to keep going,
to keep searching, as they say, even if one doesn't exactly know what for. But maybe that's the point, because if one knew what to search for, they would always remain within the known and would never discover anything new."

Tiziano Terzani

I was traveling by car when I saw something in the distance that looked like an Indian hat resting on the sand.
I stopped and approached on foot.
Hidden under the hat was an Indian man, sitting inside a small trench dug in the sand to protect himself from the wind. In front of him was a wooden gramophone with a twisted and chipped horn. The old man kept turning the crank continuously.
The horn emitted a hoarse rustling, interrupted by frequent crackles, fragments of a Latin American song: Rio Manzanares let me pass.
Although I had greeted him and stayed by his side for a long time, the old man paid me no attention whatsoever.
"Father," I finally said to him, "there's no river here."
"Son," he replied after a while, "I am the river and I cannot cross myself."
He said no more, just kept turning the crank and listening to the record.

Ryzard Kapuscinski

Let my people go surfing

Yvon Chouinard

Nietzsche leaves his hotel in Turin. He sees a horse in front of him and a coachman who strikes it with a whip. Nietzsche approaches the horse and, in front of the coachman, embraces its neck and bursts into tears.
This happened in 1889 and at that time Nietzsche himself was already far from men. In other words, it was precisely then that his mental illness had erupted. But it is for this very reason that his gesture seems to me to have a profound significance. Nietzsche had gone to ask forgiveness from the horse for Descartes. His madness (and therefore his separation from humanity) begins at the moment when he cries over the horse.

Milan Kundera

Many people in old China kept their own coffin at home to remind themselves of their mortality.
Some would even climb inside it when they had to make important decisions, in order to gain a better perspective on the transience of everything. Why not pretend for a moment to be sick, to have only a few days left - as in truth we do anyway - to realize how precious those days are?

Tiziano Terzani

"Foolish is this path, it crawls obliquely, perhaps it goes in circles. But let it go as it will, I am happy to follow it."

Siddharta – H. Hesse

"In truth, our disorientation in picturing prehistoric humans lost in wild territories depends on the point of view acquired with civilization; back then, however, we could not have experienced the lack of protection given by a village, because there were no villages, nor felt deprived of the reassuring sight of a cultivated countryside, because there were no fields.
We could not be intimidated by the lack of such references, just as the buffalo of the great prairies or the jaguar of the forest are not, who simply are at home in the boundless prairie and forest. That's how we were, where today we would feel lost: in the immense house of the living, without walls and without roofs."

The Vocation of Getting Lost - Franco Micheli.

"When I travel, I try to get to know the territory as if it were a human being, with its complicated, unfathomable personality.
I wait for it to speak.
And I wait. And I wait."

Barry Lopez

"Those wrinkles that lined his face were not just signs of the passing time, but rather of how he had chosen to live it."

Francesca Urso

"Do not give up, please do not surrender,
Despite the cold that burns,
Despite the fear that bites,
Despite the sun setting and the wind falling silent,
There is still fire in your soul,
There is still life in your dreams,
Because every day is a new beginning,
Because this is the hour and the best moment,
Because you are not alone,
because I love you.”

Mario Benedetti

"Even Apollo doesn't always keep his bow drawn."

Orazio

"I understand. So after all, it's better to be here. In this pier, this port, this city, this country."
Everything is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds."

J.M. Coetzee

"We have tried everything except love."

Theodore Monod

Alex Bellini

“If a man does not march to the beat of his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drum.
Let him march to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

Henry David Thoreau

The older one replied, "And after this we will continue to philosophize, since we are born for this purpose, even if it is about emptiness."
"What's the point?"
"I don't know"
"So why?"
"The reason is that philosophy needs death as much as religions do. If we philosophize, it's because we know we will die. Monsieur de Montaigne had already said that to philosophize is to learn how to die."

Jose Saramago

"But," thought the old man, "I keep them in the right place. I just don't have any luck anymore. But who knows? Maybe today.
Every day is a new day
It's better when you're lucky
But I prefer to be in order. So when it comes, I'm ready."

The old man and the sea – H.Hemingway

"When you set out on your journey to Ithaca, wish that the road may be long, full of adventure, full of knowledge.
Always keep Ithaca in your mind. To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
Above all, do not hurry the journey; make it long and winding, full of adventures and experiences. And when you finally arrive at your destination, as an old man, with all that you have gained on the way, you will be rich with what you have found and not expectant of wealth from Itaca.
Itaca has given you the beautiful voyage. Without her you would never have set out on the road. What else do you want?"

Costantino Kavafis

“Beautiful was the world, to consider it so: without investigation, so simply, in a disposition of childlike spirit. Beautiful were the moon and the stars, beautiful the brook and its banks, the woods and the rocks, the goat and the beetle, flowers and butterflies. Beautiful and pleasant to wander thus through the world and feel oneself so childlike, so awakened, so open to the immediacy of things, so trusting.”

Siddharta –  H. Hesse

"Do you not know the story of the Muslim who, expelled from the mosque, rolls down the stairs?"
"No, I don't know it"
"He felt pain at every step he hit, and suffered, and so he thought of God. But when he finally reached the bottom, he was sorry that there were no more steps."

Tiziano Terzani

"A man who woke up one morning in chains and did not know how to free himself. For years, he searched for someone who could set him free. Then, one day, he passed by a blacksmith's shop and saw the blacksmith working on the iron. He asked him for help, and the blacksmith broke the chains with two blows. The man was grateful and started to work for him, becoming his servant and slave. For the rest of his life, he remained...chained to the blacksmith."

Tiziano Terzani

"Noblesse oblige," observed the cat, and poured a clear liquid into a red wine glass for Margherita.
"Is it vodka?" Margherita asked, in a weak voice.
The cat was so offended that he jumped on the chair.
"For heaven's sake, Your Majesty," croaked the cat, "how could I dare to serve vodka to a lady? This is pure alcohol!"

The Master and Margarita - Bulgakov

"Every person you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind, always."

Anonimo

"You and Fidel seem to get along very well," he comments to the child when they are alone again.
- He is my best friend.
- So Fidel is full of cordiality towards you, isn't he?
- A lot
- And you? Do you feel it too?
The child nods vigorously.
- Nothing else besides this?
The child looks perplexed - No.
At that moment, everything becomes clear to him, through the mouths of children and infants. From cordiality comes friendship and happiness, picnics in the park, or afternoon walks in the woods with friends.

Coetzee

"A man explores his own mind in search of thoughts and finds only commonplaces; but at a certain point he glimpses a small opening never seen before. Where there was a wall, there is now a door."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."

Reinhold Niebuhr

"One tells that Diogenes, a Greek philosopher, lived in a barrel and the only possessions he had were a cloak and a bag with water.
One day he was approached by Alexander the Great, adorned in all his splendor. The leader asked him to express a wish, and Diogenes replied, "Stand out of my sunlight." That was all he needed to be happy.
Here, in those moments, I felt a bit like him, happy with little.

Alex Bellini

"As it was, where it was."

Venetian proverb