Four seasons for reflecting: Winter. Touch

LEAVE-TAKING (I)

Giorgina B Piccoli

Davide Giuva

Angels are all over. This is why we have chosen them for this last issue of Four Seasons: they allow us to reflect on the humanities and human life. Indeed, some authors claim that prayer is the most widely used alternative medicine in the world. However, we prefer to see prayer not as a medicine, but as a way to communicate with everything we feel and cannot explain, including angels.

FIGURE 1:

Nadia Kuprina photographed these angels in Stockholm, on the occasion of the preparation of the film ‘Portraits of Pioneers’, dedicated to the pioneers of European Nephrology.

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ARTISTS AT HEARTH DON'T DIE

We did not go to his funeral, Davide and I. You do not go to the funeral of the living ones. Artists don't die.

Not for his age is he winter. He is winter for the snow.

His brush left snow flakes of thick oil paint. Snow in the city, snow in the mountains, snow on the white birches, snow on the pear trees, still bearing their green fruit—from behind the windows, a round, naked beauty, dark hair, one everlasting smile, one dream; our friend, our past.

FIGURE 2:

The Fibonacci series falls from a dark cloud; all over, in our lives, there is mystery. Before vascular disease made it impossible for Davide to draw, he progressively reduced the size of his sculptures and drawings; however, he never stopped thinking in visual images. We had started the ‘Four Seasons project’ together, a couple of years before, when he started saying ‘I will not die, one day I will evaporate’. This issue is not dedicated to his memory. It is dedicated to his life. (Davide Giuva left us in January 2016, after over 30 years of hemodialysis.)

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ARTISTS AT HEARTH KEEP SMILING

SMILES IN HAIKU FORM

Massimo Apicella

Massimo Apicella wrote a long series of poems in the form of free-style Haiku, Japanese poems made of three verses, when recovering from acute kidney injury and three months of hospital life.

Tense smile

Armpit tickling

Feather white

Smooth smile

Skin shivering

Taken slowly

Occasional smile

Resting on the face

Heedless angle

Acrid smile

After a summer run

Sweaty skin

Peace smile

Covers the universe

Child's heart

Sack smile

Collecting hopes

Paintbrush sky

Let-down smile

Love comes but

Love goes

Split smile

On a dancing face

An awaiting waltz

Mad smile

Laughing at itself

The sea is blue

Slap smile

Given with zest

Bum passing

Star smile

The unicorn gallops

Dragons on high

Canvas smile

Careful about colours

Of a promise

Treaty smile

In the war of love

Pact signed

Button smile

When required

Press hard

Motel smile

Lovers winking

Stairs in darkness

Pin smile

Remembering a kiss

Of a mosquito

Viscid smile

Kneaded fortune

Angel's wings

Star smile

Guides my steps

Along the road

Flying smile

Slipping on the wind

White comma

Silo smile

Conserves the shivers of

Your promises

FIGURE 3:

Paolo Genovese: la Valle di Susa.

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FIGURE 4:

A prayer-cloud over the hospital garden, flying towards the Valle di Susa.

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ARTISTS AT HEARTH KEEP WRITING

David Ruff

in the fields

it begins

 after early spring …

 light-filled days

 of playful work …

there follow making a crown

 of cornflower stars

 for Aleyda ––

 the season passes …

what has been as September birds

and will be mother the grass

 that waits for winter.

FIGURE 5:

Winter circus. Almost an angel, this flower acrobat by David Ruff.

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FIGURE 6:

Cycling in the air. Life needs lightness. This angel butterfly was surprised in Amsterdam.

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ARTISTS AT HEARTH KEEP PAINTING

I'm wordless since Paolo and Davide left us. They left together, Paolo challenged by cancer and Davide consumed by long-term dialysis, great friends through it all. They were aware of their time running out, and as wise men they mastered it, leaving us in the space of a butterfly's life. As Buddhists do, they felt the presence of other worlds and lives. Paolo used to say that it was me, the painter of the angels, but I keep seeing them see them all over in his skies.

A LAST SMILE IN HAIKU FORM

Massimo Apicella

Taxi smile

Conveys emotions

On the wheel of life

FIGURE 7:

David Ruff, on the first pages of his last book, V as in Geese.

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LEAVE TAKING (II)

What is life without a bit of nonsense? What is life without a perplexed smile? What is life without unexpected beauty?

Let's leave wishing you the best, for this new-year, for every new day and for every expected or unexpected moment of enchantment.