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There are memories direct from childhood that hold profound meaning for us, also if they have been hidden in the deepest of our minds for a long time. Our minds are stamped indelibly by the places where we spent the first part of our lives; these are the "roots" we often go back to, at times of trouble or sadness, but also when we're happy and satisfied.
The peace and tranquillity we feel in those places give rise to a blessèd state that expands our emotional capacities, makes us more perceptive, refreshes our state of mind and inspires special moments of intellectual, manual and playful inventiveness. Just this magical ability to create something from a mere breath of life, I used to imagine when I was a child wandering the paths of the Antica Vetreria.
I could feel the active presence of the people who had brought this corner of the woods to life and I visualised them in the daily tasks of their work in the area of the old “cristal factory”. From the furnaces to the mill I could see every movement, all of them made in order to create a magical object as the product of clever hands and inspired intellects.
My child's eyes discovered the magic of glass, a mysterious miracle of man's creativity. My imagination ran riot, mingling willingly with my wishes, so that the molten glass grew into fantastic, unreal and sometimes grotesque shapes that filled my childish dreams. At those times I felt that I was drifting in that ancient world, a world where little was certain but hope was rife. I wanted to be one of those people, I wanted to live in that enchanted wood. I went into
the manager's house and listened to the clamour of the women, I climbed the stairs to the first floor and joined in the children's games.
This micro-society which had really existed as a manifestation of the art and craft of blowing and fusing glass, was for me a source of imagination, an outlet for a deep-felt need for fantasy that could find its natural expression only in those silent, evocative places. When I was a child I felt immersed in the lightness of beings I could bring to life but never touch, beings I could conjure up but never see.
Today I still feel the need to return to the places where as a child I left my mark, to wander in those woods, not in a search for some imaginary other world, but for that profound sensation of completeness and inner satisfaction we all long for and which is often close to us.
"It may be one morning, as I walk through the glassy air" (Montale) |
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