The story peddler #1

Selling stories is a job for crazy fellows. I’m not insane, I just sell my stories door-to-door. Rather, I tell them.

Like any other worker I face good or bad days. Like any other worker I have to be smart and intuitive. Intuition is a must, indeed. It plays the most relevant role. That’s what makes me choose between a whatever “Mr. Carinci” or any “Falpalàs ”doorbell.

Choosing the right story is even harder, if possible.  Something weird happens every time a door unlocks and someone shows up. Standing on the doorstep, for a little moment, everything around me gets black. I feel as if sunk into the void. Then is the light again. Like a vigorous pearl diver, I come up with a brand new story.

I sell words. At a good price. I allow your warm heart to state their value. I trust you.

Buying stories is a job for crazy fellows.

 

The legend of the sunflower

What an eccentric guy! One day, no one knows why, he decided to capture the four seasons. But, every time he tried to negotiate the terms with the sun, he ended his days, head bowed, counting the grass blades around his feet.

A journal for each story: Wrap leather journal with long lace. 

We call it Medioevalis. A long lace gently embraces the journal and the words it treasures. Many sizes, with or without marbled paper boards.

 

He was bright, yes.

Yes, he was bright.

He used black to fill in the eyes with irony and yellow to enhance the nature of a face; a shade of red to instill a sense of ambiguous turbulence. Finally, some white to mitigate the strength of the ensemble.

His work was a sort of popular census, something that he did obstinately and shamelessly.

“No, it doesn’t work”. He burst out one day. “What ’m looking for is the spark of a more genuine humanity”.

Then he fell silent, grabbed a knife and began removing the seeds from a big slice of watermelon.

(genuine humanity) London – UK

MicroFICTION #17

Four golden coins

The tinkling of four golden coins grabbed everyone attention. That was the reward the foreigner threw across the table. Will that gang of idlers be brave enough to face off – that very night – the gods of the storm?

All eyes turned to the man who stood up to count them before bursting into laughter.

He grabbed hold of his hat and flung the door open giving voice to the angry wind of the night. Once on the doorstep, he hesitated and when the door got shut abruptly, he was still in. He came back to the candle light with no more hint of irony on his face. “You can’t even image what it is like in the eye of the storm” he said to the foreigner “how could you understand anything like the resentment of the sky, the eternal agitation of the sea, the aversion the wind has felt to the earth since the very first day? Oh no, you can’t. Go away. It’s not your business, it’s ours”.

“I see” the foreigner replied “but I cannot bear the idea of a place where there’s no room for me”.

The empty space

microFICTION #14

Counter-resurrection

It was for that stupid affair that he finally left the place where he once buried himself into.

He blinked at the daylight, then began removing the dust from his clothes, patiently.

When he raised the eyes, we noticed how hard he was trying to unearth his voice and got baffled when he asserted that, all considered no, that wasn’t the right way to live an unforgettable experience.

“So isn’t yours” he added later “What are you clinging to? As far as I can see… to a papier-mâché architrave”.

Art installation

MicroFICTION #13

The scissors

She used to make things simple and even in troubled times the happy end was foreseeable.

I was there while she approached the scissors to the side edge of a magazine page where a boat with large white veils was entangled in the good weather.

Suddenly, she closed the blades and cut the sky into two.

“So many things happened in my life” she said trying to explain her behavior “only fragments can soothe my rage”.

What could I say? She did it again: she made hard things incredibly simple.

The cut (workers demonstration, Bologna – Italy)

microFICTION #12

Over rolling

Earth has a melancholic and reflective character; it’s an issue she doesn’t talk easily about. Most of the time, she racks her brains about a simple question: “How scared am I of emptiness?” “So much” she answers herself from distant.

One day she met Light and got totally baffled, but didn’t step back from that chromatic turmoil.

At first, she was caught by the warmth of a solid, proud but quickly blended yellow hue; then by the greedy and deep hug, typical of some red tones. Finally, she fell into a dry black space and cried out, without shame, all the solitude of her being.

Surrounded by the chiaroscuro, she closed the eyes and reached the apex.

It followed an exciting yet meaningless masterpiece, born of the rainbow and the over rolling.

Conversation (or the Story Seller)

microFICTION #10

The director

In this frame, the arena is overfilled with characters fighting for a fake tower.

We hustle about waiting for the line that follows our name in the script.

When the light is on us, the face is clear, the wrinkles enhanced, the shade gets heavy, the breath short; all this makes the drama.

She’s there, shaping us with that light, burning our souls in the name of the Art. She writes our role again and again and stares at us scribbling furiously with that impudent purple ink that ticks everybody off.

She’s a damned troublemaker.

In queue (it’s a parade), Bologna – Italy

MicroFICTION #9

Emotional anomalies

Complex personality.

Of his studies of emotional anomalies only a couple of pages survived; two poor pages debating the unexpected spasm that we, improperly, call ardor.

It was he, himself, who one day set everything on fire with a matchstick.

“People around me are cold” he said brusquely ”there was no thrill left, but mine”.

No surprise, the world welcome the act with a genuine enthusiasm.

In queue (enjoying a sunbeam)

MicroFICTION #8

Hesitation

What a strange story.

When the fame knocked at his door, he wasn’t ready.

The day he realized his qualities (originality, critical thinking and musicality) were finally known, he allowed himself a long moment of hesitation.

He woke up in the middle of the night, wrote down a couple of lines on the kitchen wall and vanished.

 “Don’t look for me”

“How good is coffee in Istanbul”

MicroFICTION # 7

The story seller

More than once, he got caught by the coils of a hug or something that was just a bit more intense than a branch in the backlight.

And the eyes who stared at him, standing quietly on the doorstep behind the flowers, were most of the times distant and gloomy.

He was a dreamer; the only clown in a moribund circus that ends the show with a hint of a bow and whispers in your ear a candid “with love”.

doorbell, somewhere in Italy

Microfiction #6