How long my irrelevant life has already been. People who were born in that very year are already 23 years old by now. I wonder if they might imagine what the Wall of Berlin was.

About nine year before that mythical concert of Rostropovich, I was in Berlin; I was very young then and probably, like many young people, I walked through things without fully realize their global dimension. But it would have been impossible for anyone to not realize what an absurd and tragic concrete metaphor of oppression that real wall in the middle of a town was.

For reasons I consider useless to mention, I crossed the border through the Berlin Wall from Eastern to Western Germany and in a little unusual way I walked through the famous Checkpoint Charlie instead of being on a tourist coach.  From a certain point of view, my young exuberance made me feel like a character of a spy story, but at the same time I could not help perceiving the tragic absurdity of those soldiers on the turrets which carried their Kalashnikov or whatever their machine gun were.

I had my passport and my visa. Even though all was in order with my papers I felt somehow scared when they checked that with a stern attention. Then only a few steps and I found myself in Unter den Linden Boulevard with all the restaurants and cafes and the voluntary display of abundance and elegance, which made even more impressive the contrast with the gloomy style of eastern Berlin.

It was totally surrealistic: two faces of the same town so different and stuck to each other and it was so difficult even for visitors to go through and impossible for the people who lived east.

A place that doesn’t exist anymore, a time which is over. I have seen that with my own eyes; at least I’m sure I won’t forget.

I’m getting older. I don’t say it with any special bitter regret. It’s simply a statement of fact. Getting older is the only way we have to remain alive and since there is not any other option I suppose it’s much more logical to take it the way it is.

Today it’s my birthday. I have already had many birthdays, so one more or one less it doesn’t make such a great difference.

I’m writing these irrelevant thoughts here in this semi-private space, because I have the impression that   very few people might arrive by chance until these virtual shores and might take the time to read what I write, more for myself than for any presumed audience.

I realize I’m old because  I have considered lately that I have seen in my life several places which don’t exist anymore and I have met many people who are  dead by now.

I know that, just said this way, the concept might sound a bit gloomy, so I must repeat that I don’t feel  any  special regret, simply I realize, with a certain astonishment, that I have already had a long life and I have been lucky enough to see things that nobody will see anymore, because they have disappeared.

It’s important to cultivate one’s memories, because often they become like precious personal vestiges.

Of course I’m aware that millions of people have had the same experiences I have had, and surely many more than me. But in my limited dimension I  have had my chances  and  the idea that  some of them cannot be repeated  makes me feel a little lost, like when in a summer night one starts looking at the starry sky and suddenly  imagine that we are just an infinitesimal spot  in an endless  universe.

I have chosen this apparently incongruous photo to illustrate this topic, because it’s in theme, in my opinion. It shows something which doesn’t exist anymore and which will never exist again in this exact form and shape. A photo of a flower I took long time ago. The life of flowers is not the most ephemeral life in nature, but it’s already in the category of very short ones.

So this flower will not be seen anymore, in reality, by anyone.

I think that in the next days, I’ll write down on this virtual notebook a few of the things or the places I have seen and now have disappeared. Just to keep them more alive in my mind.

Some of them were very important and also their disappearance or, better, their passing, created a great emotion, or attention; others were apparently less important.Nevertheless I think that everything, which is irremediably over, leaves a small trace in the experience of life of the people who had been  somehow related to that.

I’ll close this first chapter with   one of my memories which I share with a great number of people.

I had been in New York on the top of one the Twin Towers. When I was there I could not imagine   what would have happened a few years later. I don’t want to add anything to that. There is nothing to say. Words are often inadequate.  My thoughts now need to become silent.

The ability to appreciate the special flavour of little things and to keep the same refreshing  enthusiasm we used to feel, as a child, every time we discovered something unexpected is maybe one of the secrets for a better life.
The first day of this New Year brought me one of these precious ephemeral moments.
In the bluish pale light of very early morning we perceived a glimpse of movement in a field along the main regional road, an area which is usually very busy in a populated zone.
Nevertheless there are usually very few people around in the early morning of the first of January, they sleep late… Saying that there are few people around is a euphemism. Actually there was not any human being in view besides us. So we could manage to park the car at random on a bicycle path (shame on us for that! But also cyclists sleep late). I got out from the car and crossed the road and they were there, two roe deer, in a place where we would have never expected to see them. They perceived my presence, but they judged me not completely dangerous, so they remained there for a minute or two, looking  at me , calmly, while I tried frantically to take a photo of them, unfortunately aware that there was not enough light and I had not any tripod, but just one of
my faithful compact cameras which follow me everywhere.
Then they run away and disappeared behind a bush toward the lake…