Autumn is coming,

birds fly away, fishes fill with tears

their ponds.

October 2018. Summer in Italy is holding on to its last days, defying winter. Winter will come, nevertheless. But (as Shelley said) if winter comes, can spring be far behind?

Longing for my easel, I spend the nights reading towers of books: history, biographies, even Darwin’s “The Origin of Species”… All for my own book, to be precise with facts, to build characters (both the historical ones – kings, queens, tsars, councillors, grand dames, conspirators, assassins – and those who exist in my imagination, but interact with the real ones), most of all to have a feel of those times, 1860-1880. How did people think? How did they live, travel, eat, suffer or dream? They were like us, or rather we are like they were. A hundred, five hundred, a thousand or even three thousand years ago. The only real difference is technologies. Such a leap forward in science, yet so little progress in humanity. As if evolution never touched our mindset or our hearts.