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FAR AWAY

issue 5

EDITOR'S LETTER

di Arianna Pietrostefani

We have been accustomed since childhood to place ‘in a country far, far away’ all those situations borrowed from the imagination.

As if it were a real employment office of unfulfilled dreams, placed in drawers never opened, left there to gather dust, between contingent deadlines and bills of some former roommate or ex-partner who – sticazzi is no longer my thing.

The fact is that, in the common imagination, the concept of Far away is what comes closest to that of desire, of “I would like but I can’t” or – even worse – of “I would have liked, if it weren’t…”

We will not be here to trouble our soul on the power of self-imposed limits: rather we would like to help you in the change of wardrobe, that famous “Take or Toss” that helped Carrie Bradshaw leave her comfort zone to launch herself into new challenges.

Everything that makes us free from routine is Far away; that gives us the courage to take risks even just to live a moment.

A memory is far away, one of those special ones that you thought you had removed but that suddenly emerges, one day, while you are queuing at the checkout of a supermarket.

The first kiss, the first yes, the first goodbye, as well as the next kiss, the next yes and the next goodbye, is Far away.

That elementary school theme where you imagined astronauts, firefighters, footballers or frontman of a boyband is far away, but then the courage to try to support Private Law for the first time is also far away.

“That country” is far away where you have sent an infinite number of people, hoping not to see them again and that you punctually meet every sacrosanct day.

Yes, because the distant is a bit of a bastard and does not give a high five to karma.

Far away is the memory of a grandmother who tells, for the umpteenth time, to her young grandchildren, about that handsome boy who returned from the war who will be hers forever.

And at the same time, even the idea of growing up, let alone grandparents, is far away in those young grandchildren.

Far away is everything you don’t see today, baby, and not because it’s short-sighted, but simply because it’s farther away, behind the dunes of Pilat, behind those towering mountains that scare you, or at the bottom of that sea you like to cross. And you may or may not believe it but it’s waiting for you.

Yes, because if it does not go hand in hand with karma, it is with life that the Far gives the best of itself, when “it shuffles the cards, confuses ideas and often decides for us”.