Kissing Rocks


In this brief and surreal excerpt from Imperium, Kapuscinski's prose is tight, vivid, and memorable.

Through the act of worship, a people confer formidable power on that most inanimate of objects, a stone.

This immortal energy lives inside the stone like a perpetual captive.

And is released back to people through the caresses of their lips.

Before movie idols, before rock stars, and before pop icons, people revered rocks.

And their power consumed them with desire.


Alberico Collina


"The people of the Uzboj worshiped sacred stones. This is typical of inhabitants of deserts, who revere everything they have at hand - stones, gorges, wells, and trees. Fighting was forbidden in the place where a sacred stone stood. The stone protected one from death. A concentrated force dwelled inside it, imprisoned in an immutable form, bestowed upon it for all eternity. Kissing the stone gave people an almost sensual pleasure. Rashyd calls my attention to a fragment of The Voyage in which...as Ibn Battutah writes..."the lips feel an immense sweetness when kissing stone, so that one wants to go on kissing it forever." To the people of the Uzboj, a stone was a divine being."

Heart, Gut, and Mind


The opening passage from Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt speaks to the heart, gut, and mind.

In just a few sentences, the author gives us an almost Dickensian description of his childhood: the underprivileged social background, the religious education, the national poverty.

All of these are brought to life by the brief but eloquent sketches he paints of his dysfunctional parents, of his inadequate authority figures, and of the English.

All of whom disappoint.


Alberico Collina


"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.
. . . nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years."

When Adventure Knocks


In Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene, the narrator, while at his mother's funeral, recollects his late father's unusual sleeping habits, and his mother's comic attempts to put a stop to them.

It is a revealing portrait of an eccentric family by a man who has recently retired.

A man who thinks his life is over.

But this man's destiny is about to change thanks to his aunt, who he will meet again at the funeral.

She will lead him on a series of surreal adventures that will take them to the far side of the world.

And she'll remind him that the best of life is yet to come.


Alberico Collina


"My father had been dead for more than forty years. He was a building contractor of a lethargic disposition who used to take afternoon naps in all sorts of curious places. This irritated my mother, who was an energetic woman, and she used to seek him out to disturb him. As a child I remember going to the bathroom – we lived in Highgate then – and finding my father asleep in the bath in his clothes. I am rather short-sighted and I thought that my mother had been cleaning an overcoat, until I heard my father whisper, “Bolt the door on the inside when you go out”. He was too lazy to get out of the bath and too sleepy, I suppose, to realize that his order was quite impossible to carry out. At another time, when he was responsible for a new block of flats in Lewisham, he would take his catnap in the cabin of the giant crane, and construction would be halted until he woke. My mother, who had a good head for heights, would climb ladders to the highest scaffolding in the hope of discovering him, when as like as not he would have found a corner in what was to be the underground garage. I had always thought of them as reasonably happy together: their twin roles of the hunter and the hunted probably suited them, for my mother by the time I first remembered her had developed an alert poise of the head and a wary trotting pace which reminded me of a gun-dog. I must be forgiven these memories of the past: at a funeral they are apt to come unbidden, there is so much waiting about."

THE FIRST SEASON


I hear her lock the shop from inside.

I’m standing in the display window, and with the corner of my eye, I see her hang a “CLOSED” sign on the door.

She ties her hair back with an elastic band she was keeping between her lips.

She walks towards me, wiping her hands on her blue jeans, and whispers, “It’s your turn, Mister.”.

Her slender fingers begin to unbutton my shirt. She has warm hands.

When she pulls off my sleeves, she’s so close I can smell her hair.

One by one, she takes all my clothes off, and puts a “SALE” tag on each.

Tilting her head to one side, she purses her lips while her eyes scan me up and down.

And they linger on my crotch.

She goes to the back of the shop and comes back with a large roll of brown paper.

After measuring a length of it around my waist, she cuts it to size.

She tapes the paper to my midriff like a mini skirt, steps back to look at me, and smiles.

I’ve seen her do it to the others. In a few days, she’ll take the paper off me, and she’ll dress me for the new season.

A mannequin’s life is measured in seasons.

And this was my first.



Alberico Collina

The following are two brief stories both about Truth but very different in content and form.

The first is a 55-word story called The Search by Robert Tompkins included in World’s Shortest Stories Of Love And Death.

It describes the Pyrrhic victory of a man who searches for the truth...and finds it.

The second tale is a Jewish teaching story entitled The Naked Truth.

It is about our need to dress up Truth in story in order to accept it.

These stories are vivid and memorable metaphors of Truth that stay with us long after we've read them. 

They leave a sour aftertaste that gets sweeter until they make you smile.


Alberico Collina


THE SEARCH by Robert Tompkins


Finally, in this remote village, his quest ended.

There, by the fire, sat Truth.

Never had he seen an older, uglier woman.

“Are you Truth?”

The wizened, wrinkled hag nodded.

“What message can I take from you to the world?” he pleaded.

She replied, spitting into the fire. “Tell them I am young and beautiful.”




THE NAKED TRUTH (Old Jewish Teaching Story)

"Truth, naked and cold, had been turned away from every door in the village. Her nakedness frightened the people. When Parable found her she was huddled in a corner, shivering and hungry. Taking pity on her, Parable gathered her up and took her home. There, she dressed Truth in story, warmed her and sent her out again. Clothed in story, Truth knocked again at the doors and was readily welcomed into the villagers’ houses. They invited her to eat at their tables and warm herself by their fires."

“A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it’s moorings or orientation... Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger.” Ben Okri

“Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man, but they don't bite everybody.” Stanislaw J. Lec

"To be a person is to have a story to tell." Isak Dinesen