Ever since I was a boy, and I can’t say why, I have never felt the need of the supernatural, nor of anything associated with the transcendental. Now, as then, at every moment of my existence, I immerse myself in the infinite wealth of the natural world embracing me, and I embrace it in turn and feel that I am its legitimate child. My fantasy, in this strange universe, roves from spinning quarks to star clusters; I feel at ease both in the micro as well as the macro; my “ego”, like a concertina, expands and contracts in the immensity of the real, and it feels very much at ease in such an immense space of cycles and gravitational fields.

I experience more emotion and interest in looking at images of a supernova than in all the paintings of saints in the world. A blade of grass growing out of a crack in the wall of an old, abandoned house moves me more than anything in the Sistine Chapel. I’m delighted, not by unreality, but reality: chicks hatching from their shells, the sweetness of a puppy, the first steps of a child. With bated breath, I watch a television programme showing the drama of an antelope being chased by a leopard; I observe the growth of the rocket salad I have planted, and how, just like sunflowers, it turns its tender little leaves towards the sun; in autumn, my heart full, I watch the leaves dropping from the branches of the trees, zig-zagging down through the rays of the sunset to finally settle on the ground.

These are the things which fill me with love and enthusiasm for life. I can hear all of nature speaking to me, and I reply; I feel that I belong to nature and nature belongs to me. And then I feel my heart pounding with joy, my soul is elated when I manage to understand something, to understand how certain phenomena work. I discover a source of joy every time I manage to find the secret hidden either in an object or in a person. I am passionate about life and I feverishly love every moment of it. Everything I need to live a life full of emotions, satisfaction, interests, love, I find it all in the reality surrounding me: this is my essence, my nature, condition, light, and, in the end, my destiny.

 See Ha un senso la vita?

 Translated from the Italian by Joy Elizabeth Avery. Tel: 015.703954; Email: joyelizabethavery@tiscali.it