I saw a video of Nadal, who is given the honor, after winning no fewer than 14 Roland Garros, of having a slab engraved on one of the tournament's official courts. This made me realize something at once terrible and light, tragic and ephemeral. Nadal, a tennis player without precedent, I remember him with his long hair and outstretched arm. The long leg, the yellow cuff. A gladiator of the court, against Federer, Djokovic, against everyone. Now, in front of the sight of his footprint etched in marble, dirty with clay, red as the desert at sunset, in front of an audience as moved as he was, he bursts into tears. Next to him, hugs. A moment that moved me too, but then brought out an ambiguous feeling in my heart. We are a flutter of wings, and we become a slab at best. Often the artist finds himself facing his mortality. In reality, art is a little dream of immortality, a desire to cross the threshold of time with a legacy, which too, sooner or later, will become, as Rutger Hauer says so well in Blade Runner: "tears in the rain." If it is not now, it is a hundred years from now. If it is not a hundred it will be a thousand, or billions. What does time matter when compared to our finitude and the immensity of creation? Perhaps one day I will tackle a "saga" that is also this. A proceeding through time, letting the protagonists of one page become a distant memory a few chapters later, and finally, a statue, an effigy, a sentence, a thought to which no one is able to connect the author anymore, but which is still present, permeating consciousness. The beauty of life is in the present, in the discovery of the unknown that will always surround us, both in time and space. Art is the symbol of our finitude: like extemporaneous butterflies, we fly from idea to idea, toward a stable rock, which we toss through the waves of time, hoping that someone on the other side of the threshold will continue the baton. Yes, someday I will boldly address this theme. With a saga that will have human beings as ants, protagonists of pages in the ocean of time. I don't have the means yet; it's probably something that will require all the energy I have, all the wisdom and strength. Because, let's be honest, tackling "existential lightness" requires lion courage, Plato's wisdom, and sublime technique. For now, I'm dabbling in structuring the third volume of The Labyrinth of Hope and putting the second volume in place. What a mess! A tangled castle, full of traps and illusions, a labyrinth of mirrors where I see fragments of me, of those I meet. By the way, I realize more and more that I love listening to others. Because they are a constant source of inspiration for my characters, my stories. As soon as I hear something interesting, I absorb it and inject it into my path. And I realize that the more I tense my ears and open my eyes, the more the world gives me pearls to put on my necklaces