Whenever humanity seems condemned to heaviness, I think I should fly like Perseus into a different space. I don’t mean escaping into dreams or into the irrational. I mean that I have to change my approach and look at the world from a different perspective, with a different logic, and with fresh methods of cognition and verification. The images of lightness that I seek should not fade away like dreams dissolved by the realities of present and future…
~Italo Calvino
«A fantastic representation of reality…» Ítalo
Forever grateful to this master, a curious, and colorful human being who wrote perhaps my favorite text, the closing paragraph of his seminal work Invisible Cities:
For now, I am a-musing myself today reading out loud the marvelous introduction to Calvino’s book “If On A Winter's Night A Traveler, 19791
His eclectic style and connection to the imaginary perhaps is clear in his birth chart [see an image of his natal chart and a quick reading below] paired with an unusual upbringing, (born in Cuba to Italian parents)2.
AUDIO below reading the introduction of Calvino’s book
Playful, intriguing, curious, always a wanderer and died too young or perhaps came to tell exactly what needed to be said.
We are here still reading, listening to his words. His oeuvre is fabulous as it was his colorful life.
For me, Ítalo like fellow geniuses such as Dante, Leonardo, and Borges covers the sky of my life with a luminosity that inspires abundant creativity.
Giovanna his only daughter, was left with the burden or perhaps the treasure of keeping that flame alive.
In my case, memories change and fade dissolving with new ones that only arise from the need to keep the flame alive in my mind, as opposed to my heart which is always receptive to any signal albeit made up.
I too lost my father, I was very young and all my memories at this point can make it into a fiction novel.
«Some fathers never die. It is the case with mine, a writer, whose sudden death almost 30 years ago propelled him into immortality, and left me awkwardly straddling two realities; one from which he was irreversibly gone and another where he is forever present. It proved impossible to spend any solid block of time in that first, heartbreaking reality and mourn him in peace — assuming there is such a thing as peaceful mourning — without being interrupted by regular and impetuous demands from the other one, where he was being read, published, reprinted, quoted, taught.
[…] This year, in order to do things differently, I will make a conscious effort to separate the man from his writing. One of my favorite stories by my father (from the Mr. Palomar series) evokes a vivid memory of him sitting at the top of the sloping lawn beside our summer home in Tuscany. The Palomar character and my father are so similar that I tend to conflate them. The story is titled “Dialogue with a Turtle,” and the mental image it conjures up is of my father, in espadrilles, sitting cross-legged in a washed-out butterfly folding chair, his brow simultaneously knitted and raised, making him look 80 percent concentrated and 20 percent perplexed. But this image is a fake, as many memories are: It is a composite of various moments, of photos, of other people’s recollections.»
~Giovanna Calvino, Italo Calvino: A daughter’s reminiscences, 6/13/2014
«I started producing myths from modern science»
I am building a case against attention to myself.
In the last week, I have been a hermit, slowly dissolving into the echo of silence, in the upcoming weeks, I am in a retreat from the world, into a sort of fantasia…
Into the realm of the imagination.
The power of isolation and creativity all at once!
Yeah, less celestial talk or not that much, as its chatter needs to be validated by real happenings…
In this realm,
I am the wanderer,
The traveler.
Both the observer and the observed.
I told you I was on a pilgrimage to relate to the most precious of things ::: myself!
My freedom,
My life,
Roles → In which capacity?
-The creative
«Everyman is an artist»
Joseph Beuys once said «Everyman is an artist»3
And he meant Art as «a social practice»
Be mindful that I did not say as a social activist…
Art has been abused as a social activity where political agendas are in a constant exchange of deals only benefitting those clever enough to play the game.
No! I want to be free
ART IS FREEDOM
And now I have a safe place to be in my heart.
As I play with the architecture of an upcoming book - yes you read right, the structure that will be faithful to my non-linear, abstract, and authentic, non-compromising ways, that at times reveal me as a Polymathes at heart. A design or arrangement that won’t betray the fluidity of my nature, instead it will underline, enhance and celebrate it.
As I play and unfold surprising turns, like this morning out of the blue Ítalo appeared before me while I was swimming and he uttered these words “Do a search with my name, not the usual Google search, be creative… what you’ll find will validate your feelings!”
-ok, will do that! and so I did…
I am not trying to emulate Calvino's style in any way, it may certify the non-linear narrative, yet orderly concepts I am composing in my upcoming hieroglyphic document, if my design is based on Geometry, it allows the frequency of the line to meet the nodes of intuition and instinct, it allows it to keep paving and pacing its way to freedom.
Stay tuned…
Grazie mille Caro Italo, nella ricerca ho trovato la mia strada, inciampando in piccoli tesori che non consideravo ancora importanti.4
With Calvino, every word had to be weighed. I would hesitate for whole minutes over the simplest word—bello (beautiful) or cattivo (bad). Every word had to be tried out. When I was translating Invisible Cities, my weekend guests in the country always were made to listen to a city or two read aloud.
Writers do not necessarily cherish their translators, and I occasionally had the feeling that Calvino would have preferred to translate his books himself. In later years he liked to see the galleys of the translation; he would make changes—in his English. The changes were not necessarily corrections of the translation; more often they were revisions, alterations of his own text. Calvino’s English was more theoretical than idiomatic. He also had a way of falling in love with foreign words. With Mr. Palomar's translation, he developed a crush on the word feedback. He kept inserting it in the text and I kept tactfully removing it. I couldn’t make it clear to him that, like charisma and input and bottom line, feedback, however beautiful it may sound to the Italian ear, was not appropriate in an English-language literary work.
Interviewed by William Weaver & Damien Pettigrew
Calvino in a rare interview above:

DO, RE, MI
These days I have barely any contact with the outside environment, I spend hours sensing Mother and in touch with water and the elements. I also listen and test higher frequencies tuning into a path of reconnection.
There is no reverberation or noise other than what needs to be perceived -
Mother is responding to touch
The last Full Moon fell on her Aquarius Nodal Axis, 19th gate, The sensitive soul, which is all about feeling, sensing, and touch, is also tuned and sensitive to communal needs.
Do you know how much can humans sense with our sight and our hearing, touch, smell, and taste?
Do you know that if waves exist outside of these spectrums they are still perceived even if one is removed physically?
Well, imagination travels along those lines or frequencies.
I have the dedication to wrap up some things this month:
-A public commission with some geometry involved [I am excited to apply new knowledge]
-A journey of editing and laying out a book. [a playful feeling]
-A personal challenge to crack the code of the intervals [interruptions] found in natural law [the law of seven]
[…]
I will share at some point, perhaps.
Enjoy your own delightful parcours.
Enjoy the elements and humans that wake you up from dormant aisles…
Humanity is at stake,
The Sun is burning,
My heart is beating,
My breath, while I hold it and release it, marks the beats of the gratitude I have toward this experiment.
Calvino your wit is my joy!
When you copy paste you are depriving your creativity of singularity
The impact of a manifestor is not in the amount of informing that can occur.
Rather in the quality of this initiation.
So I say “I want this”
How much do I want it?
Venus is still in retrograde…
“The money line” what a sick way to name a channel 45-21 in human design which is a Manifestor channel.
There is no money in resources when you think that money grows in trees…
-What is the value you are giving to your knowing? And if you don’t know YET, What are you waiting for?
Re - S O U R C E
See where this word stems from.
Your source, not mine.
We may be connected but your singularity belongs to you and so does your authority.
A u t h o r I t y
See?
If you get inspired by something or someONE, do question what frequency are you connected to5…
If on a Winter's Night, a Traveler is a feat of striking ingenuity and intelligence, exploring how our reading choices can shape and transform our lives. Originally published in 1979, Italo Calvino's singular novel crafted a postmodern narrative like never seen before—offering not one novel but ten, each with a different plot, style, ambiance, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together, the stories form a labyrinth of literature known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers pursue the story lines that intrigue them and try to read each other. Deeply profound and surprisingly romantic, this classic is a beautiful meditation on the transformative power of reading and the ways we make meaning in our lives.
"Calvino is a wizard...There is no halting [this book's] metamorphoses." —New York Times Review of Books
Italo Calvino was born on October 15, 1923, in Santiago de Las Vegas, a suburb of Havana. His father Mario was an agronomist who had spent a number of years in tropical countries, mostly in Latin America. Calvino’s mother Eva, a native of Sardinia, was also a scientist, and a botanist. Shortly after their son’s birth, the Calvinos returned to Italy and settled in Liguria, Professor Calvino’s native region. As Calvino grew up, he divided his time between the seaside town of San Remo, where his father directed an experimental floriculture station, and the family’s country house in the hills, where the senior Calvino pioneered the growing of grapefruit and avocados.
The future writer studied in San Remo and then enrolled in the agriculture department of the University of Turin, lasting there only until the first examinations. When the Germans occupied Liguria and the rest of northern Italy during World War II, Calvino, and his sixteen-year-old brother evaded the Fascist draft and joined the partisans. Italo Calvino, The Art of Fiction No. 130. Interviewed by William Weaver & Damien Pettigrew ISSUE 124, FALL 1992
‘Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter along the death line: to dismantle in order to build A SOCIAL ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART. This most modern art discipline – Social Sculpture/Social Architecture – will only reach fruition when every living person becomes a creator, a sculptor, or an architect of the social organism.’ Joseph Beuys.
thank you so much, Dear Italo, in the search I found my way, stumbling across small treasures I had not regarded as important yet.
There is still time to be courageous, Venus trines Chiron and the potential is to develop strategies arranging the roles within society to cope with the future as a leader. Be open to interacting by listening in and reflecting on the past to find orientation, as the Sun enters Gate 7, and the Earth is grounded in Gate 13 on August 4th, Jupiter on Gate 2 knows about the direction into which the resources of Gate 14 want to be steered.
Your journey through the creative process and connection with Calvino's work is truly inspiring!
Your dedication to exploring art as freedom and the fluidity of your upcoming book has me excited to see the final result.
Keep up the amazing work, and thank you for sharing your thoughts with us!