You might rightly expect to know how it ended the day of transfer to Mueda Quissanga, Mozambique. I ask you to wait another few days: I'm waiting for permission to use a picture that I think the epilogue emblematic of that day. authorization should not be long in coming, true Sara? In the meantime I want to bring to your attention a conversation that occurred between me and Alice just yesterday (the day before yesterday for you readers).
Alice is a girl six years or so: he attended first grade and is the daughter of a couple of my dearest friends. The more attentive readers of this blog may remember her for a design that has given me some time ago and I mentioned in a previous post (see IMAGINE ). The other day I was taking a walk along the path that winds along the slopes of Mount Soratte, not too far from Rome, together with friends with whom I had lunch together and their children. On the way back me and Alice preceded the rest of the group along the path surrounded by woods. We walked in silence, and when the wood is thinned out we stopped at the edge of the path to see the valley below the mountains and more distant horizon. It was at this point that I made such a request Alice and dry states: "When is the end of the earth?".
The request was received but not totally unexpected for me that have been found unprepared. Datos we were contemplating a scene that was spreading to the horizon had no doubts about the meaning of the question, I thought that with "the end of the Earth," Alice is a seienne, intended to limit the world. I thought that the baby had a conception prepitagorica o , se preferite, medievale della Terra: una Terra piatta che il fiume Oceano delimita dall'abisso. Pensavo cioè che ingenuamente si chiedesse se la Terra finisse oltre quei monti che cingevano il panorama che stavamo osservando. Al che, con la soddisfazione di dare nozioni così importanti ad una mente che si sta formando, ho cercato di spiegarle nella maniera più semplice possibile che la Terra non finisce, che è come una palla enorme, così grande che sembra piatta, che se uno cammina per tanto, tanto tempo, alla fine fa tutto il giro e si trova allo stesso punto di partenza. E per dare evidenza visiva a quanto andavo affermando mi aiutavo gesticolando con le mani: una a simulare una sfera l’altra ad indicare un immaginario percorso Equatorial. Glad to be able to give a sufficiently clear and simple explanation I looked to see if Alice had actually understood what I had tried to inculcate the roundness of our planet.
The perplexity of his serious expression I did not bode well. "No," she said, "I wanted to know when the world is that there will be no more." What a fool! I must say that I had not really thought of his words all'accezione eschatological. But, surely, Alice already knew that the Earth is round, maybe that is not perfect and that is a geoid (Christian, mother, is always generous with information and cultural stimuli to the children), I imagine. Alice wanted to know what it was when the Earth will cease to exist as we know, when it settles the human race.
At this point a welter of questions I flashed to mind. Why a six year old girl, serene and happy, he asks questions like that? I, too, at his age, I was pondering such deep questions? But first I had the answer. I then tried to strike up a plausible answer. Trying to avoid catastrophic releases at the end of the world impacts with meteorites wandering through space, Armageddon, the court Universal ... that might disturb it, I tried to find an explanation that can move further in time beyond the end of our planet and our species. I then opted for the version that requires the end of our world will be when the sun will exhaust its fuel, namely hydrogen, and shut down forever in an almost painless. "But this will happen in many years, Alice, when we are no more!" I tried to rassicurala. To which she looked at me very serious and said: "When I'm gone I and my fijoli?". His fijoli are the ultimate abstraction of time into the future to which his tender age can lead: "It will take place between Alice're quiet long, long time: we do not have to worry about."
It 's the second time I heard him say that word "fijoli" said children as I have heard many times to my grandmother who is Umbra (indeed even Alice passes all year, some Summer in Umbria). The first time was a question that hit me at point blank range, unexpected as a bolt from the blue, a few years ago: "Why you do not have the fijoli?" Demand more than legitimate: Alice see me as an older person and all older people with whom he has to do, they children. It 's a question I often ask are heard in Africa, with the same childlike wonder, where men often at my age have grandchildren.
I thought that I had those fijoli and reply to Alice that I did not know or did not want to answer. Meanwhile, Alice was distracted by something and thought now to travel far from leaving me alone with my thoughts ... unresolved
Blessed childhood!
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