Tag: life
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THE LIBERATION
At five years old, I did not enter school: I was introduced. Mothers in the 1970s did not ask for permission, did not negotiate with rules. They decided. And their decision became State law without ever passing through Parliament. For them, age was not a fact — it was an opinion. If you were five…
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MASKS AND IDENTITY
The first masks we learn are the carnival ones — expressions that do not reveal emotions but traits. For a moment, people borrow a gesture, a posture, a playful way of being, and call it celebration. Then come the others, the everyday masks. The ones we used to live, to show what we want to…
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THE ENEMY
As an observer — with that same childlike hyper‑vigilance that never really left me — the word “enemy” hits me in the simplest way: it is not a friend. It is a closed definition; it does not invite interpretation. But in everyday life we twist it, bend it, dilute it. The enemy becomes an opponent,…
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THE WAY WE WERE
I have always been fascinated by the beginning. Not the one written in books — that is just someone’s version, a representation, never an absolute truth. I mean the real beginning, the one no one could record. I imagine it like this. The woman — the first real being from which everything starts — walks…
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NICE TO MEET YOU
Thinking of a world without women is like taking oxygen away from humanity.They need very little to win — it only depends on where they come from. Colombia.Five colleagues invite me to dinner.Between jokes and side comments, they decide to debunk the myth of the Italian Latin lover. The conversation slips into sizes, colors, names,…
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THE SERIOUS MAN
My father walks into a small tobacco shop in Seminara, a town in the province of Reggio Calabria. He is not there. He is in the area for work, a Gillette sales representative. Inside, he runs into a neighbor from back home, a bank teller. He asks him, “What are you doing here?” The man,…
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WIFE WITH A SURPRISE
From the title, most people would expect a noir with erotic undertones. Relax: nothing like that. What happened is a true story that, in a normal life, would shock anyone. In mine, it becomes a coherent anomaly — the confirmation of who I have been since the day I was born. The name Frega carries…
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MEASUREMENT
The first thing everyone worries about when you are born—mother included—is your weight. As if it were a medical certification. Then one day you realize you are obese, and measurement turns into a curse. Mothers in the 1960s, during the economic boom, had a simple belief: “Everything I eat is good for the baby.” So…
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THE MECHANICAL MODE
When the world was upside down and supply chains were collapsing, I sold a shipment of small electronic devices to a businesswoman in Central Europe. Three months later—exactly when the market had stabilized and everyone was pretending chaos had never happened—she wrote to me. She did not dispute the entire batch. Only her “personal sample.”…
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THE SCRIBE
It does not take much time to create a story. You just need to be good at cheating a little. Then they give you a badge and call you a writer. Ahahahah. Psychiatry, when it tries to evaluate you, creates exercises nobody on Earth could pass. But they did understand one thing: a “crazy person”…