Giuseppe Mileti – Aræ Oleum

“I had passed through those streets thousands and thousands of times. And thousand of times had seen those faces. Time changes everything. It changes us. It changes how we view things and understand them. Houses collapse. Others take their place. Faces change. They grow. New generations take the place of previous ones. So my eyes and my mind perceive things that they have always seen in a different way. An old barber shop sign makes me think of how many of us enjoyed that place trying to be different. Once again beautiful or just trendy.  Groups of old people talking make me imagine the thousands of ups and downs experienced over a lifetime. A child on a bike readily waiting for a friend to run around or play football with, or to just spend time together in the funnest way possible. Plants become trees. Trees wither, or are cut down, and some of us try to save them by helping to support them with some bricks or with our own love. New ethnic groups create different crowds. The madman of the town has never changed his jokes and way of being, making me believe that everything is the same as it was many years ago. A mix of sadness yet something safe all at the same time. Places that have always existed appear new to me, as if they were waiting to be re-discovered.  New technologies moving forward are even becoming something familiar to people of a certain age.  Faith, mystified to the point of becoming a simulacrum of itself.  And then the town street market, trees with ripe fruit, dogs on the streets looking for some food.  Farmland burns with fire, even during the hottest seasons. The newfound taste of a home-made ice cream. Parked cars, motionless, as part of a landscape that is constantly changing and constantly at a stanstill. The small urban cemetery. The town of the past.  All those things that previously went unnoticed and were of little importance take on new worth, of various connotations, somehow becoming a different entity.