Story Box

Scatola di cartone. Un buio contenitore in cui celare lettere d’amore o scarpe dismesse. Oppure una superficie solida che istiga forbici, arrapa colle stick, assorbe liquido cerebrale e si tinge di nuove idee. Basta ad esempio un semplice forellino per aprire una finestra e fotografare.

Like a child would make handcrafts with a cardboard, cardboard shilouettes should populate this cardboard world. And pencils and colors give those shapes life. And this is the world some artists gave me, a little personal world that I can cut out, or paint, or use to write poems on his walls.

Sagome di Rivoluzionari, Poeti, Pittori, Vagabondi entrano sotto un coperchio dipinto di cielo, e costruiscono animali e alberi di cartone, mari e strade, donne e bambini. Così sono nato io, costruito dalla mano di una donna, nato con un taglio di forbici e del colore sul corpo.

And so I invented flowers, birds, squares and cities. Soap balls popped out of the box. But I had to stay in the box, this was the condition I accepted. Inside the Story Box i met people that those artists wanted me to meet, some of them only heard my soul breathing, some others broke the milky thinny paper curtain between me and them, and they loved me.

Sarei voluto restare per sempre nella scatola, io e quella donna, io e quel buio, quel rifugio antiatomico a prova di guerre, mafia, miseria. Il mio mondo innocente di bambino che non conosce il mondo, il mio mondo fatto di cartoncino bristol e sacchetti con il pane appena sfornato.

I came closer to the curtain. I recognized a shadow through the milky veil, but I only saw a girl shape dancing for me. She could not speak, and I could not hold her with a glance. I was allowed only to read what I wrote, and that was what i did. I read myself. That was me. Really me. Ismaele Cattaneo in the Story Box.