The title of this blog is not accidental. You don’t realize the value and the weight of words until you find yourself in limit situations. I mean situations in which words’ importance and meaning are highlighted, as the case of the word “racism”. In the last years of my social activity too many times I have heard on the street: “I am not racist, but …” followed by exquisitely xenophobic statements towards one or another ethnic group or culture. That but enabled any statement.

But there are also limit situations in which words start to fail. You can no longer define what’s happening to yourself or around you. Sometimes the surprise for the great monstrosity or the infinite wonder takes away the words and leaves you breathless. When instead the lack of words becomes pathological, it’s called aphasia: the image of what one would like to say comes to mind, but lacks the caption.

Lukily for me and thanks to the conscious effort I have applied over the years, I have repeatedly been suspended in the clouds, speechless, kidnapped by unspeakable wonder, struck by ineffable emotion, caught by the most inexplicable comprehension. As long as I have words I’ll try to tell these experiences and the perspective that, later, opened a gap in my ignorant look.