A few months ago (How many? Time is such a relative
dimension…) I had tried to develop a little project in order to give back a certain dose of effective dignity to so called “snail mail”.
I offered to write a hand written personal letter to all the people who would have liked finding in their real mailbox something a little different from a bill or various advertising.
The positive answer to my proposal was quite above my expectation.
So far I have written over 120 letters and I still receive new requests, which I intend to satisfy on regular basis.
It has been a bit demanding engagement, but also a very rewarding experience.
Writing to strangers helped me to put in discussion the usual too superficial relationship we adopt toward unknown people who casually share with us a moment of time.
I don't mean to say that we have to became extremely familiar and intrusive, asking questions to everyone we meet in a lift (by the way, have you already noticed how ill at ease the majority of people look during the short journey in a lift, when we have to share a limited space with strangers or people we only know vaguely by sight?), but I do think we don't need to feel uncomfortable, it can be so easy to simply  say " Good morning" and to smile, just a little smile.
Writing to a stranger might work a little the same way.
It would be absurd to write  about all our private matters or to ask for specific questions, but it's possible to have a slightly personalized "written conversation" based on  subjects which are not necessarily related with our private life or the personal matters of the other person. The important element is trying to convey the impression we really  want to have a "written conversation", not that we simply want to be listened  as if our little daily  events were the centre of the universe and everyone should be honoured and happy to know that we have done this and that.
I'm happy, nearly touched  by realizing that  people still appreciate to get a real envelope which arrives from a foreign country, an envelope which has travelled  in a real dimension, taking the time for that, passing from
hand to hand...
We are so used to receive immediate information, to have instant short communication through Internet, various Social Network ( my troglodytic nature makes me a real profane about the mechanism and the purposes
of them and I have not any intention to get further in my approach to that parallel world) and to live in a fast  dimension that maybe sometimes it's also refreshing to slip into a kind of slowness for not strictly necessary 
things.
Waiting for a real letter, written on real paper, with a real pen is a subtle  and obsolete pleasure which is enjoyable to renew.
Paper is a frail support, but it's tangible, it can be kept inside a box, a drawer. All what is either written or simply printed on real paper  changes colour, becomes yellow and  a little worn out, but it gives also an idea of life, it involves  not only the sight, but also other senses, the smell, the touch...
I'll keep on  handwriting letters to all the people who ask me for that, it will take time, but time is the salt of life 
for many things.
I'll keep on writing, then sticking stamps on an enveleope, than taking the envelop to a Post Office.
I promise, I will.

Sunrises and sunsets, when they are frozen in a single photo, might look similar and occasional viewers tend to mistake them for each other.
It’s ironically peculiar, because, after all there is nothing more different from a sunset than a sunrise; it’s not just a matter of temporal evolution, but also a difference in temperature, in environment, in spirit.
Sunrise is  more secluded, more private, mostly in summer when the sun repeats its performance every day at a little earlier hour.
Sunset is a public celebration, which people share all together, often from a table of a sidewalk restaurant, from a public  bench.
Sunrise is full of unexpressed promises; it offers a brand new light when the curtain of night falls.
Sunrise is often silent, only the birds change their songs while the horizon shivers at East to get open for a moment into a purple wound, from which a sudden gush of gold flows impalpably.
Sunset is opulent like the vestment of a cardinal, is seductive and tired like an already made-up  actress, is sound and impressive like the last  note of a symphony and then leaves us  on the doorstep of another night.
Still sunrise and sunset, for a handful of second might look alike, a couple of twins parted at their birth and condemned to never meet again.


 

Every viewer tends unconsciously to identify him/herself in the image they are
looking at, so the majority of people  think that a photo must rather be of a
sunset simply because people are more familiar to sunsets.
I feel sympathetic
with the ones who see a sunrise also in a photo of a sunset instead.