It?s easy to say ?stones?...

Not so easy to pick up hundreds, thousands after having seen, touched, observed, chosen, loaded up, brought near, loved them...and not for a day or a month or a year but for almost forty years...for a spur, an instinct, a desire that are inexplicable, inscrutable, quite a madness because walking across the river Adige in an ordinary afternoon it may happen to you that your eyes don?t stop at the sunset or the water flowing or your emotions but, half serious half humourous, your eyes low and mingle with that silent stone-bed in a strange dialogue between man and stone, past and present and your heart may amaze in front of the repetition of some forms...it?s incredible this stone looks like the head of a sheep and this one too, and this one too...whereas these are woman bodies and birds and fish and these are faces, faces talking to you in windy words on the shingle of a river...and you convince yourself more and more each day that somebody in a past ordinary day sculptured those stones, gave them particular shapes while today they give you a sweet and tormented obsession and people?s astonishment astonishes you and you find incredible their incredulity but all the stones you?ll pick up, more and more and more, will finally convince them as well...it couldn?t have been nature, water, waterfalls, the long endless journey of their history to shape those stones but our ancient grandfathers, our primitive fathers...and so it ends by making you arguing with people doubting your absolute certainty but you go on, never give up, countercurrent just like your beloved stones...all this could happen to you in an ordinary afternoon putting on your life a new, unique, unrepeatable, mythical slant...was it man?s hand or nature?s one to give us these recurring shapes, these harmonious curves, these stone creatures? Perhaps the most fascinating thing is that we?ll never know, it will remain a mystery like future, life after death, love...anyway I thank you, dad, because on that far off afternoon you lowered your eyes and raised your hand, as in a prayer, giving us a wonderful journey in the soul, a suspended dream, an endless research of eternity and poetry...