ONE HUNDRED RINGS (TO ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS) (a 55-word story)


From atop a tree, the brothers spied the genie raising a strongbox out of the water.

He opened it, revealing a stunning woman, who sang the genie to sleep.

She ordered the brothers to make love to her, or she’d wake up the genie.

Afterwards, she demanded a ring from each.

She counted hundred rings.



Aiberico Collina

The Lovers' Tree


Pyramus and Thisbe, originaly by Ovid and here written by Edith Hamilton, is the story of two young lovers separated by a wall in life, who were united by a tree in death.

Their respective parents forbid them to see each other, so every day and every night their words of love travel through a hole in a wall.

A hole that seems to shrink as their passion grows.

And so they decide to meet under a candid-berried mulberry tree, to run away together as soon as darkness falls.

But a prowling lioness, a torn cloak, and fear conspire to compromise their moonlit rendezvous.

And their blood spills to seal a tragic end, and give its colour to the berries of the lovers' tree.

The mulberry tree.


Alberico Collina


"PYRAMUS AND THISBE by Edith Hamilton

This story is found only in Ovid. It is quite characteristic of him at his best: well-told; several rhetorical monologues; a little essay on Love by the way.

Once upon a time the deep red berries of the mulberry tree were white as snow. The change in color came about strangely and sadly. The death of two young lovers was the cause.

Pyramus and Thisbe, he the most beautiful youth and she the loveliest maiden of all the East, lived in Babylon, the city of Queen Semiramis, in houses so close together that one wall was common to both. Growing up thus side by side they learned to love each other. They longed to marry, but their parents forbade. Love, however, cannot be forbidden. The more that flame is covered up, the hotter it bums. Also love can always find a way. It was impossible that these two whose hearts were on fire should be kept apart.

In the wall both houses shared there was a little chink. No one before had noticed it, but there is nothing a lover does not notice. Our two young people discovered it and through it they were able to whisper sweetly back and forth. Thisbe on one side, Pyramus on the other. The hateful wall that separated them had become their means of reaching each other. "But for you we could touch, kiss," they would say. "But at least you let us speak together. You give a passage for loving words to reach loving ears. We are not ungrateful." So they would talk, and as night came on' and they must part, each would press on the wall kisses that could not go through to the lips on the other side.

Every morning when the dawn had put out the stars, and the sun's rays had dried the hoarfrost on the grass, they would steal to the crack and, standing there, now utter words of burning love and now lament their hard fate, but always in softest whispers. Finally a day came when they could endure no longer. They decided that that very night they would try to slip away and steal out through the city into the open country where at last they could be together in freedom. They agreed to meet at a well-known place, the Tomb of Ninus, under a tree there, a tall mulberry full of snow-white berries, near which a cool spring bubbled up. The plan pleased them and it seemed to them the day would never end.

At last the sun sank into the sea and night arose. In the darkness Thisbe crept out and made her way in all secrecy to the tomb. Pyramus had not come; still she waited for him, her love making her bold. But of a sudden she saw by the light of the moon a lioness. The fierce beast had made a kill; her jaws were bloody and she was coming to slake her thirst in the spring. She was still far away for Thisbe to escape, but as she fled she dropped her cloak. The lioness came upon it on her way back to her lair and she mouthed it and tore it before disappearing into the woods. That is what Pyramus saw when he appeared a few minutes later. Before him lay the bloodstained shreds of the cloak and clear in the dust were the tracks of the lioness. The conclusion was inevitable. He never doubted that he knew all. Thisbe was dead. He had let his love, a tender maiden, come alone to a place full of danger, and not been there first to protect her. "It is I who killed you," he said. He lifted up from the trampled dust what was left of the cloak and kissing it again and again carried it to the mulberry tree. "Now," he said, "you shall drink my blood too." He drew his sword and plunged it into his side. The blood spurted up over the berries and dyed them a dark red.

Thisbe, although terrified of the lioness, was still more afraid to fail her lover. She ventured to go back to the tree of the tryst, the mulberry with the shining white fruit. She could not find it. A tree was there, but not one gleam of white was on the branches. As she stared at it, something moved on the ground beneath. She started back shuddering. But in a moment, peering through the shadows, she saw what was there. It was Pyramus, bathed in blood and dying. She flew to him and threw her arms around him. She kissed his cold lips and begged him to look at her, to speak to her. "It is I, your Thisbe, your dearest," she cried to him. At the sound of her name he opened his heavy eyes for one look. Then death closed them.

She saw his sword fallen from his hand and beside it her cloak stained and tom. She understood all. "Your own hand killed you," she said, "and your love for me. I too can be brave. I too can love. Only death would have had the power to separate us. It shall not have that power now." She plunged into her heart the sword that was still wet with his life's blood.

The gods were pitiful at the end, and the lovers' parents too. The deep red fruit of the mulberry is the everlasting memorial of these true lovers, and one urn holds the ashes of the two whom not even death could part."

The opening lines of Sylvie by Gérard de Nerval propels us inside the mind and heart of its listless protagonist.

A man who frequents the theatre and finds solace in an actress whose "vivid appearance illuminated the empty spaces, and, with a breath and a word, summoned the shadowy figures of the actors back to life.".

The object of his desire is a woman who "showed her simple beauty against a curtain of shadows...".

Nerval paints a compelling picture of a man whose obsession for beauty injects colour back into his life, and lends shape to the shadows that populate his world.

His quest for beauty will take him, and us, on a sentimental journey through the places of his childhood.

A landscape of magical places inhabited by hauntingly attractive individuals, who take us by the hand through a landscape of memories and dreams.

A landscape where reality is but a detail that recedes in importance as our protagonist's and our imagination takes flight.

A landscape that consumes and seduces us in equal measure.


Alberico Collina


"I left the theatre where I sat every evening in a stage box, dressed with the elegance and care befitting my hopes. Sometimes the house was full, and sometimes empty, but it mattered little to me whether my eyes rested upon thirty or forty deadheads in the pit and upon boxes filled with old-time caps and dresses, or whether I found myself part of an enthusiastic audience, crowding every tier with color and the gleam of jewels. The stage awakened my interest no more than did the house, except, during the second and third scene of the tiresome play, when a vivid appearance illuminated the empty spaces, and, with a breath and a word, summoned the shadowy figures of the actors back to life.

I felt that I lived in her, and that she lived only for me. Her smile filled me with infinite contentment, and the resonance of her voice, now soft, now vibrating with emotion, made me tremble with joy and love. She understood all my enthusiasms and whims; for me she possessed every perfection – radiant as the day, when the footlights were tuned down and the rays of the chandelier showed her simple beauty against a curtain of shadows, like one of the divine Hours carved on the sombre background of the frescoes of Herculaneum."

Life Continued


This brief poem by Mary Elizabeth Frye begins on the ground and ends in the sky.

It starts out in sadness and ends in joy.

It is a prayer - for we are the Earth, the Air, the Fire, and the Water.

And Death shall not have us.

For we are Life continued.


Alberico Collina


Do not stand at my grave and weep by Mary Elizabeth Frye

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.

Stories Unearth What We Bury

Ancient Coffer of Nuri Bey is a story that rotates around an ancient chest, whose power lies in the mistery of its contents.

Certain stories, and this is one of them, reveal what we conceal from ourselves.

And they do this by reflection.

Some phrases resonate with us louder than others, lending new meaning to the story.

Often the truth they disclose about us is not flattering.

But this makes them all the more valuable.

Ultimately, these stories help us discover who we really are.

If we let them.



Alberico Collina



Ancient Coffer of Nuri Bey by Idries Shah

Nuri Bey was a reflective and respected Albanian, who had married a wife much younger than himself. One evening when he had returned home earlier than usual, a faithful servant came to him and said:

"Your wife, our mistress, is acting suspiciously. She is in her apartment with a huge chest, large enough to hold a man, which belonged to your grandmother. It should contain only a few ancient embroideries. I believe that there may now be much more in it. She will not allow me, your oldest retainer, to look inside."

Nuri went to his wife's room, and found her sitting disconsolately beside the massive wooden box. "Will you show me what is in the chest?" he asked.

"Because of the suspicion of a servant, or because you do not trust me?"

"Would it not be easier to just open it, without thinking about the undertones?" asked Nuri.

"I do not think it is possible."

"Is it locked?"

"Yes."

"Where is the key?"

She held it up, "Dismiss the servant and I will give it to you."

The servant was dismissed. The woman handed over the key and herself withdrew, obviously troubled in mind.

Nuri Bey thought for a long time. Then he called four gardeners from his estate. Together they carried the chest by night unopened to a distant part of the grounds and buried it.

The matter was never referred to again.



Source: http://www.spiritual-short-stories.com/spiritual-short-story-278-Ancient+Coffer+of+Nuri+Bey.html#sthash.IO4FVizj.dpuf

Just Once


The opening lines of Maintains Pereira, a novel by Antonio Tabucchi, here translated by Patrick Creagh, foreshadow a resurrection of sorts.

In the bloody days of Salazar's dictatorship in Portugal, two young and desperate lovers enlist the help of Pereira.

Pereira is an unlikely protagonist, a conservative widower, obsessed by death and his obesity, who will find the will to live again, by changing the desperate couple's fate.

And putting his life on the line, Pereira will taste youth and drink adventure in the shadow of military oppression.

And he'll learn what it's like to have something worth dying for.

Just once.


Alberico Collina


"Pereira maintains he met him one summer’s day. A fine fresh sunny summer’s day and Lisbon was sparkling. It would seem that Pereira was in his office biting his pen,the editor-in-chief was away on holiday while he himself was saddled with getting together the culture page, because the Lisboa was now to have a culture page and he had been given the job. But he, Pereira, was meditating on death. On that beauteous summer day, with the sun beaming away and the sea-breeze off the Atlantic kissing the treetops, and a city glittering, literally glittering beneath his window, and a sky of such a blue as never was seen, Pereira maintains, and of a clarity almost painful to the eyes, he started to think about death. Why so? Pereira cannot presume to say. Maybe because when he was little his father owned an undertaker’s establishment with the gloomy name of Pereira La Dolorosa, maybe because his wife had died of consumption some years before, maybe because he was fat and suffered from heart trouble and high blood pressure and the doctor had told him that if he went on like this he wouldn’t last long. But the fact is that Pereira began dwelling on death, he maintains. And by chance, purely by chance, he started leafing through a magazine. It was a literary review, though with a section devoted to philosophy. Possibly an avant-garde review, Pereira is not definite on this point, but with a fair share of Catholic contributors. And Pereira was a Catholic, or at least at that moment he felt himself a Catholic, a good Roman Catholic, though there was one thing he could not bring himself to believe in, and that was the resurrection of the body. Of the soul yes, of course, for he was certain he had a soul; but all that flesh of his, the fat enveloping his soul, no, that would not rise again and why should it?, Pereira asked himself. All the blubber he carted around with him day in day out, and the sweat, and the struggle of climbing the stairs, why should all that rise again? No, Pereira didn’t fancy it at all, in another life, for all eternity, so he had no wish to believe in the resurrection of the body. And he began to leaf through the magazine, idly, just because he was bored, he maintains,and came across an article headed: ‘From a thesis delivered last month at the University of Lisbon we publish this reflection on death. The author is Francesco Monteiro Rossi, who graduated last month from the University of Lisbon with a First in Philosophy. We here give only an excerpt from his essay, since he may well make further contributions to this publication."

from Maintains Pereira by Antonio Tabucchi (translated by Patrick Creagh)

Her Song


The following poem is one of my favourites.

We hear the sad songs, we smell the breathing roses, and we feel the grass covering us.

We also perceive what the author will not: we see the soft shadows and the silent rain, and we hear the lamenting nightingale.

And we know the poet's life is a song she will remember; a song her lover could never forget.

Her Song.


Alberico Collina


Song by Christina G. Rossetti

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain;
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

The Pilgrim Soul


This is one of my favourite poems.

Its language is simple.

Its message is universal.

And the tone is of someone who knows the value of loving with irony.


Alberico Collina


When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

I Won't Be Jealous


And I'll read to you.

On a boat.

At night.

I'll read the words I could never write.

I'll read them slowly.

I'll make them count.

And when sleep will take you,

I won't be jealous.


Alberico Collina

Painting Words That Dry Below Our Breath

An orphan grows up in Naples under the watchful eye of Don Gaetano. Don Gaeta’, as he is known, is a caretaker with a skill in storytelling and spotting trouble at a distance. And both skills will prove useful in a neighbourhood where ignorance and violence conspire to cross your path many times a day. This is The Day Before Happiness – Il giorno prima della felicita’ - by Erri DeLuca, translated by Michael Moore. It is a tale in which a young boy overcomes real and imaginary fears to become an adult. It is a story of poverty, pride, and passion, where Don Gaeta’, through his evocative anecdotes, will instil in this orphan (and in us) a love of Naples, its people, and its history. And where he will show him how to walk upright, and look people in the eye; teaching him how to live, love, and ultimately survive.

In the following excerpt, De Luca has the protagonist narrate how he learned to love and respect language by “painting” words, drying them below his breath until the “blue of the ink trembled while it changed color.”:

“We used to write with a fountain pen and ink was available at every desk inside a hole. To write was to paint: you dipped the pen in, let the drops fall until one remained, and with that you managed to write half a word. Then you dipped again. We poverty cases would dry the sheet of paper with our warm breath. Below our breath, the blue of the ink trembled while it changed color. The other children dried with blotting paper. Our gesture was more beautiful, blowing wind over the flattened paper. The others instead crushed their words beneath a white card.”

Original (In Italian)
“Si scriveva con il pennino e con l’inchiostro che stava in ogni banco dentro un buco. Scrivere era una pittura, si intingeva il pennino, si facevano cadere gocciole finché ne restava una e con quella si riusciva a scrivere una mezza parola. Poi si intingeva di nuovo. Noi della povertà asciugavamo il foglio con il fiato caldo. Sotto il soffio, il blu dell’inchiostro tremava cambiando colore. Gli altri asciugavano con la carta assorbente. Era più bella la nostra mossa che faceva vento sopra il foglio steso. Invece gli altri schiacciavano le parole sotto il cartoncino bianco.”