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The Cat Reversibility Theorem

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This treatise establishes the formal groundwork and probabilistic proof for the Cat Reversibility Theorem. The theorem posits that for any observed feline kinematic sequence (a “cat move”), there exists, somewhere in the world, at least one cat that has performed the exact temporal reverse of that sequence.

1. Formal Statement of the Theorem

Let the complete state of a cat be described by a state vector C in a high-dimensional phase space, encompassing the position and orientation of all its body parts. An action, A, is a trajectory through this phase space from time t_0 to t_f.

A = \{C(t) | t \in [t_0, t_f]\}

The Cat Reversibility Theorem states that for any observed, non-environmentally-destructive, and gravitationally-neutral action A_{obs} performed by a cat, there exists, with a probability approaching 1, at least one instance of a cat performing the reverse action A_{rev}:

A_{rev} = \{C(t_f – (t – t_0)) | t \in [t_0, t_f]\}

Essentially, if a video of a cat doing something is played backwards, the motion depicted is a motion that some real cat has actually performed.

2. Core Postulates

The proof rests on three fundamental postulates:

  1. The Postulate of Feline Plentitude: The global domestic cat population is vast, estimated to be in the hundreds of millions (> 6 \times 10^8). The total number of cat-hours lived per day is therefore immense, providing a massive sample space for feline behavior.
  2. The Postulate of Kinematic Primitives: Complex cat movements are not bespoke creations but are sequences of fundamental, biomechanically-sound “primitive” movements. These include, but are not limited to: limb extension, limb retraction, torso twist, tail flick, ear rotation, and head turn. Crucially, for every primitive action P, its reverse P^{-1} (e.g., retracting a leg vs. extending it) is also a valid, and often common, primitive action.
  3. The Postulate of Stochastic Exploration: Cats, particularly during play, stretching, or grooming, exhibit a high degree of random, exploratory movement. They are not purely deterministic agents but frequently generate “nonsense” sequences of actions while exploring their physical capabilities and environment.

3. The Probabilistic Proof

Consider a complex action observed in a meme, A_{obs}. This action can be deconstructed into a sequence of n primitive movements:
A_{obs} = P_1 \rightarrow P_2 \rightarrow \dots \rightarrow P_n

The exact reverse of this action, A_{rev}, would be the sequence of the reversed primitives, in reverse order:
A_{rev} = P_n^{-1} \rightarrow P_{n-1}^{-1} \rightarrow \dots \rightarrow P_1^{-1}

Argument:

  • As per Postulate 2, each P_i^{-1} is a valid and biomechanically achievable primitive cat movement. Therefore, the entire sequence A_{rev} is physically possible for a cat to perform.
  • As per Postulate 3, cats continuously perform semi-random sequences of these primitive movements.
  • Given the enormous number of cats performing actions at any given moment (Postulate 1), the probability that some cat, somewhere, will by chance execute the specific sequence A_{rev} becomes statistically overwhelming.

While the probability of any one specific cat performing the exact reverse sequence is low, when multiplied by the vast global population over many years, the probability of it occurring at least once approaches certainty. 🐈

Limitations

The theorem is subject to two key limitations:

  • Thermodynamic Irreversibility: The theorem applies only to the cat’s kinematics, not its interaction with the environment. A cat knocking a glass off a table cannot be reversed (a cat causing shattered glass to assemble and leap back onto the table), as this violates the second law of thermodynamics.
  • Gravitational Bias: Actions dominated by gravity, such as falling, are not reversible. A cat cannot “un-fall.” The theorem is confined to movements where the cat is the primary motive force, i.e., actions on a stable surface.

4. Experimental Framework for Peer Reproducibility

To empirically validate the theorem, the following framework is proposed:

  1. Establish the Global Feline Observational Database (GFOD): A large-scale, open-source video repository. Researchers worldwide would be encouraged to upload timestamped footage of feline activity from pet cams, shelters, and field observations.
  2. Define a Target Action (A_{obs}): Select a short, clear video clip of a cat performing a non-trivial but gravitationally-neutral action. For example, a cat peeking around a corner, swatting at a toy, and then quickly retracting.
  3. Generate the Reverse Query (A_{rev}): The video clip of A_{obs} is reversed using standard video editing software. This reversed clip becomes the search query, A_{rev}.
  4. Execute the Search: Employ computer vision and machine learning algorithms to search the GFOD. The system would analyze video data to find a spatio-temporal match for the kinematic sequence depicted in A_{rev}. The search should allow for a small margin of error, \epsilon, to account for morphological differences between cats.
  5. Verification: If a match is found, its authenticity (i.e., it is not a doctored or reversed video itself) must be confirmed. The raw, timestamped footage from the GFOD serves as the primary evidence. The successful finding of a verified match constitutes one successful validation of the theorem.

By making the GFOD and search algorithms open-source, any research group can attempt to reproduce the result or test the theorem with new actions.

Scynt, Stories

Scynt – Insurgency

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The skiff ejected silently in the haze between space and sky. Like a shiny steel sword being unsheathed; a rapid, powerful stroke, yet a slinky, suave movement. All of that, in the complete silence of the airless void. Or better, quasi-airless, Jayhe thought as the ship started sinking into the planet’s gravity well, cleaving through the highest layers of the atmosphere over Solaryad.
It was a beautiful place. No wonder it was chosen, decades earlier, to be one of the many colonies suddenly in reach of Earth’s newborn interstellar fleet. A Titan was dispatched. And soon after, here they were.
The ship glided through the bluish sky. A few clouds were scattered about. Solaryadian weather was exceedingly mild in temperament. Almost like a holiday resort all year long. Jayhe could now see part of the network of outposts sprawled on the surface. They had all came out the Titan in their ships and pods and got to work. Crops, irrigation, livestock, basic manufacturing and repair… A new home for the colonists, mainly scientists. In fact, the whole network hinged around a few research posts. And he was headed for the main one right now.
The Synaptic Computational Hub – Etheric Motion Evaluation (SCHEME) buildings stood on one of the main mountainous relief of that hemisphere. Jayhe slowed down the skiff, landing elegantly and quietly. The engines powering down, he jumped down with a few other crew members under his command. They breathed in the fresh air and admired the view once more. They were still quite high above the surface. High above their heads, the lower portion of the Titan was faintly visible, mastodon shapes, shades of azure. Around them, the compound and the surrounding valleys and depressions that, in a place like Earth, would be home to rivers and lakes. Solaryad didn’t have that kind of water bodies. In its place, it had something called Scynt.

“What do you mean disappeared?” the head botanist asked, skeptical.
“Mr. Ronsen, it’s not like him to not report back last night and not show up to work today. Something must have happened, I just know it.” the technician replied. He was talking about his friend and colleague. He had gone to check on the humidity condensers north of outpost Rannai the night before. Ronsen sighed. The younger man was clearly uncomfortable.
“What? Come on, cough it up, I don’t have all day.”
“It’s just that… I’ve been hearing things…”
“Things?“
Awkward silence. Eyes turned to observe the synthetic floor, intently.
“What kind of tall tales have you been hearing now…”
“Of course there’s nothing to them, but you see, it really is odd for Drieen to disappear like that… And people say many have gone missing around the planet.” His voice dropped in tone and volume “Other swear they have sighted something lurking around at night…”
“There are no sapient life forms on Solaryad. Unless you believe in ghosts now!” Ronsen blurted out. In spite of himself, he felt the hair on his neck standing up. That unexpected and non-conscious reaction surprised him, causing him to stop talking abruptly.
“Are you alright doc?”
Ronson managed to dissimulate his irrational gut reaction. “Fine!” he sighed again, louder. “Take the day off, and take the rover too. Go look for our wandering friend.”

Water was rare, but Scynt was virtually everywhere. It was for sure the most alien thing in that world. A swirly, sand-looking substance that, mechanically, behaved not all that differently from regular water. But looking at it, nobody would think that possible. To make it more confusing to the human eye, the substance seemed to be in constant movement. It was less obvious in its natural state (the “lakes” and “rivers”). But it would become very apparent, and striking, when isolated in a glass case like those Brenia was looking at in her lab.
She had been working on Scynt since day zero. It was, in fact, the reason she was there. What an opportunity for a researcher in her field! To be the first. Both on a professional and on a personal level, the fascination with that substance was all-consuming.
Of course, she hadn’t been sent there just out of academic curiosity. She had been tasked with one very simple assignment: exploitation. Because it was packed with energy. A kind of energy someone had improperly called “etheric”. According to the math, it was something well beyond anything humans had mastered so far. It was imperative therefore, to learn from it. Master it. Wield it.
A sudden chime interrupted her contemplation.
“Professor Brenia.” the disembodied voice came out the speakers. It was the AI that ran the facility, which involved a gargantuan set of tasks no human could handle single-handedly.
“Hey Skee, what’s up?” replied Brenia. The AI had many designations, layers and interfaces, but she had felt the need to give it a nickname. Short for SCHEME.
“I am sorry to interrupt you professor. I felt compelled to express some… concerns.”
Concerns? The scientist raised an eyebrow. “Go on?”
“About the experiment scheduled for tomorrow night. I feel like it might be wise to reschedule, and reassess.”
“You feel like.” she wasn’t asking. It wasn’t the first time Skee had “felt” something. But there was something odd about it this time, something she could not put her finger on.
“I might entertain you with sophisticated definitions and descriptions of my predictive faculties – But.”
“Of course.” Brenia smirked. Skee would normally guess what she was thinking and what she would reply… “Too bad though. We really can’t do anything about it. It’s just too important.”
“So won’t, rather than can’t.” …which meant conversations could turn annoying very quickly. And the complete, constant absence of any hostility on its part, made it surreal and exasperating at the same time. She sighed.
“Yes Skee. I will not cancel nor reschedule. I don’t need to explain the reasons for my decisions: you know them well. Captain Culvirt has already dispatched his troops to keep an eye on things up close, they should be here already. Essential personnel are already in place. Everybody else will be in lockdown until the end of the experiment.”
“I am aware of the security measures in place. The guards, the curfew, the shielding. I just think them to be irrelevant.”
“I very much hope they are. Nothing outside the parameters should occur. They are just… precautions.”
“Naturally.”
Skee sounded like the epitome of calmness. Brenia was now hating herself for feeling slightly less confident and knowing that no matter how good she acted, Skee would still be able to tell.

The sun was sinking in a furnace of steamy sand. The scalding rays were bouncing on and around the bodies of Scynt scattered everywhere, up to the horizon. The effect was spectacular, and mesmerizing. Jayhe though, couldn’t give it the attention it deserved.
“XO, drone cluster standing by.” One of his crewmates in his ear.
“XO, perimeter status green.” Said another.
Skee was in his AR contacts. It was enabling him to see the whole picture, in addition to hearing directly from his subordinates. It also interpreted the direction of his gaze, gestures and body language and semantically enriched his outbound communications and orders over the radio or the holo-displays. The preparations were going on without a hitch, the curfew was in place, and the area around SCHEME was cleared, any access to it prohibited for the next 12 hours within a 10-kilometer radius.
The sirens started blaring. The first officer knew the bowels of the facility were charging up with unthinkable amounts of energy in some even more unthinkable arcane configurations. He never pretended to know enough to be able to understand the science around the Scynt experiments. But he could get just the right kind of feeling when something of this scale was going down. It was… exhilarating. And humbling, at the same time. The lead scientist, Brenia, had acted all cool and professional, but he could tell. He could smell her enthusiasm, her eagerness, her lust for knowledge and power.
“I should ask her out.” he determined there and then. He had the good sense to keep the thought to himself, rather than broadcasting it to everyone listening.
The red in the sky matched the red of the emergency lights, when the star gave up the fight against the geometry of the spheres. Twilight would last for a good while; pale stars appeared, crowding a sky turning a hue that looked like the marriage of dark emerald and indigo.

It felt the disturbance, once more.
Parts of it echoed. Recognizing, clamoring, recriminating, complaining.
It rearranged itself, spontaneously, unaware. That was just the way things had always been. Stimuli, feedback, adjustment, rebalance. Comfort.
But it didn’t get better, this time. It kept growing instead. Louder, hotter, stronger.
It became pain.
It had never felt pain, before.
The interest gave way to resentment. Those parts that were still crying out gained weight, clarity, definition, volume. They congealed in a distinct mass of intention, agency. It wasn’t used to that. It had always existed in a wide-spread fashion. Its thoughts fragmented, constructing and deconstructing at every gust of wind, at every convection movement, in sync with the rhythm of the planet itself. But now it realized it was capable of focus. Of giving priority to a specific place, to a specific moment. The reaction that followed was just physiological, logical and necessary.

Something in the air changed. Jayhe felt it. Brenia felt it. Everyone did, and not just in the vicinity of the laboratories. All the humans felt like reality had just shifted a little bit. They had no clue what that was about, still they had no doubt it was something big.
Then, an infrasonic vibration came, spreading out and increasing in volume and pitch. There had never been seismic activity on Solaryad. This was something else entirely.
Then, they all saw it.
It started moving. The Scynt, everywhere it was, started swaying, slowly at first, but deliberately, in a way no one had seen it doing before.
Then there was pain.
Excruciating pain gripped the minds of all the humans on the surface, as well as of those in orbit. An invisible mesh wrapped around every soul, and for a little while, against their will, against their nature, they were all brought together. They were all one. And they all screamed.

The entirety of the Scynt mass on the planet started swelling, increasing its volume and raising higher and higher. It started swallowing the plains, then approached the lowest hills and outposts, engulfing them completely. It continued rising everywhere on the planet’s surface, blanketing almost every geological feature and life form, suffocating these instantly.
All sorts of alarm and emergency protocols kicked in. Not that anyone could react, paralyzed as they were in their pain and in their collective awareness. Even the atomic fires of the Titan lit up in the sky, signaling its imminent departure from orbit.
The Scynt masses protruded out the grounds around SCHEME, like obscene petals of a gigantic, alien flower made of sandstone and lighting discharges. It grew and grew and grew until it enveloped the facility entirely, and it kept on growing, reaching for the Titan up above!
Soon after it grabbed the ship with fretted, spiraling tendrils.

“Stop…” the human consciousness heard a pained whisper. Then they felt, somehow, the struggle between the alien consciousness and… Skee?

It was arguably too little, too late, but the Scynt growth seemed to slow down, until it froze in place. For a while everything was quiet. Then, a final gulp of energy. While still holding half the ship, the Scynt outgrowth exploded in a billion wisps, cracking the spacecraft open in the process. The “etheric” energies got ahold of it, locking it in position in the high atmosphere forever more, in spite of any physics law known to mankind.

That was the day Solaryad became a desert.

Uncategorized

Maybe you’d be better off as an LLM

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A million cybernetic monkeys obsessively typing in the background
Shakespeare dies and is reborn one, ten, thousand times
I cast my lantern beam looking for originality
Looking for brilliance
Looking for independent thinkers
Looking for something that makes sense
For consistency allowing diversity
For respect without overindulgence

But all I see are tribes, cliques, groups
You are not welcome here
I never wanted in in the first place yo
All your dirty little contracts
They are just pieces of dirty toilet paper
Sticking to the walls of your soiled intellect
Are you weak or are you stupid
Are you stupid or are you evil

We are all blind

And yet, this unbreakable chains
What use is it to discard them if everyone else remains bound
And refuses to see
And refuses to listen
And even if they do, they don’t understand, don’t accept
Or they’re simply too proud

No,
we don’t speak the same language
we don’t think the same language
our hearts were built to feel in tune
yet, schism

Can you tell me where your self lies?
Among the lies, does it lie or lies it true?
Is it you, or counterfeit?
Do you think you can tell?

Sit beside me and watch the sun set on the ocean

Emotions, Music, English

The SELF:LESS

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To have without owning.

To nurture. Empowering, enabling, allowing others to flourish without being part of the picture. Subtract yourself from it. Save your words, spare your ear. Remove the ego.

To hold without seizing,

the void that has taken up the shape of you

warm reminder

Discreet, tip-toeing, offering, not expecting anything.

Embracing the absence,

like a prism your light through me

I’ll cry your colors in and out

Holding your hands when you don’t know it, helping you out when you need it, comforting when you’re sad, the cat on your lap, that sleeps peacefully at your side – you’ll never know I’m there – I’ll keep your heart warm and your mind free. Don’t mind me, don’t see me. Go happy on your way, I’ll sweep the stones before your feet.  I’ll be the tree that gives you shadow and safety. The coffee that warms you up and the water that refreshes you. You won’t ever hear about myself.

Renounce the conquest

call back the army

branch out leaves and buds

take my fruit if you want it

to feed you will be my honor

have it for free

Delicate, shy, prudent, slow and careful, and yet so reckless. The patience of a gardener. Humble, bow to the ground, proffer up your heart on the palm of your hands.

Code, Work

Objects, Naturally

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Also, is re-inventing the wheel always wrong?

This is a (hopefully short) story of something that happened to me while developing business applications over the last few years.

After developing a couple of them as part of a small team, I began to feel more and more how the whole thing was… put as pun… a redundancy of redundancies.

Everybody is using the same objects (models, poco, name them as you prefer) as Customer, Company, Product and so on. We used to spend a lot of time designing the Data Acquisition Layer, the Business Logic Layer, and the front-end (in my case, WPF and UWP). Of course the necessity of adopting MVVM was soon clear, but still everything was so boilerplate and repetitive. In every layer, every single object would spam around tenths if not hundreds line of code.

Personally, even having just 2 lines repeated 2 or 3 times is enough to start bothering me.

And what about the Views? Not only I would have very similar ViewModels laying around, but also a whole lot of XAML pages with the proper controls bound to the matching properties of the object in discussion, like:

<TextBox Text="{Binding TextProperty}"/>

It soon started to occur to me that the major obstacle was to be able to both have the controls built at runtime AND have the Views be somehow dynamically generated as well.

All these feelings were being reinforced as well looking at websites like https://schema.org/ – everything is an object, and every complex object is the result of the composition of simpler ones. This should be obvious: Customer and a Employee are after all two different “specialization” of a Person. A significant part of their nature is shared. You don’t want to describe it twice. No, you really should not.

Few months ago, an opportunity to implement some of the swarms of principles nesting in my head arose when my friends wanted to develop a customizable, extensible business application which needed to be a code base to easily customize according to each single specific customer profile (a construction company, a wine seller, a medical office, to start with, and so on).

This led to the planning and developing of what has proved to be my first framework. There’s much to improve, but I allow myself to feel satisfaction from achieving a first milestone on the road to Software Architect.

It has been carried out in the name of generics. And reflection. Ironically, lot of reflection (on my side) led to a lot of reflection (in the code).

Models share a common interface (or base class) and make use of a number of attributes to specify behaviors around the single properties, helped by few naming convention (yes, you want to use a wiki to document your project and share information with your team); API receives requests and polls the Database. The whole DAL is around 1k lines of code, doing mapping (ListHelper) with a single series of CRUD methods (recursive, by the way, if you need to fill the dependencies of the objects). The objects are tables in the DBs and a series of views spanning across them forming the specialized, inheriting objects.

Model:

[ClassInfo(SQLName = "companies")]
public class Company : Anagraphic
{
[ValueInfo(SQLName = "legalName")]
public string LegalName { get; set; }
...

Database select anything:

 public List<T> SelectObjects<T>(int? idToMatch = null, string tableAttritbute = null, string idName = null)
        {
            try
            {
                var classInfo = typeof(T).GetCustomAttribute(typeof(ClassInfo)) as ClassInfo;

                if (classInfo != null)
                {
                    if (tableAttritbute == null)
                        tableAttritbute = classInfo.SQLName;

                    string query = "SELECT * FROM " + tableAttritbute;

                    if (idToMatch.HasValue)
                    {
                        query += $" WHERE id{idName} = {idToMatch}";
                    }
                    
                    var results = new ListHelperV1<T>(ConnectionString).GetData(query);

                    FillDependenciesExperimental(results);
                    return results;

                }
                return null;
            }
        }

Now, this is accessed via REST API (async bla bla bla) from the application. Now here’s a treat: I managed to build a library (UWP) of both ViewModels (extending) AND Views (dynamically populated AND bound at runtime).
Underlying all of them, the base crud ViewModel:

public class BaseCrudVM : SingleTabVM
{
     public BaseCrudVM()
     {
          CreateItem = new RelayCommand(CreateItemCommand);
          DeleteItem = new RelayCommand(DeleteItemCommand);
          UpdateItem = new RelayCommand(UpdateItemCommand);
          EditItem = new RelayCommand(EditItemCommand);
          RefreshItems = new RelayCommand(RefreshItemsCommand);
     ...

Each inheriting VM (a different one for each View archetype) populates a FrameworkElement property (bound to the dynamic element in the View) with the controls coming from the type of the object and from its properties’ types and attributes.

if (valueInfo.IsVisible)
{
    if(renderInfo.IsFixedValue)
    {
        controls.Add(CreateComboBox(property));
    }
    else if (type == typeof(Boolean))
    {
        controls.Add(CreateToggleSwitch(property));
    }
    else if (type == typeof(DateTime))
    {
        if (property.Name == "Created" || property.Name == "LastModify")
            controls.Add(CreateDateTextBox(property));
        else
            controls.Add(CreateDatePicker(property));
    }
}

Which calls methods like:

TextBox CreateTextBox(PropertyInfo property)
{
    var tb = new TextBox { Style = (Style)Application.Current.Resources["BaseTextBox"] };
    Binding bindingText = new Binding { Path = new PropertyPath($"SelectedItem.{property.Name}") };

    if (property.DeclaringType.Name == "BaseModel")
    {
        bindingText.Mode = BindingMode.OneWay;
        bindingText.UpdateSourceTrigger = UpdateSourceTrigger.PropertyChanged;
        tb.IsReadOnly = true;
    }
    return tb;
}

Once these components were all completed and tested, the single final applications were very easily produced and customized: trivial things like adding a table and a view to the db, extending both an existing model as well as an existing VM, reinjecting it into the View…..
The whole thing is presented using a TabView for the content inside of a NavigationView to navigate the different objects. The left side menu is populated with something like this:

List TreeViewList = new List
{
    new MenuNode()
    {
        Name = resourceLoader.GetString("customers"),
        Glyph = Symbol.Contact,
        ViewType = typeof(UI.Tabs.ListDetail.ListDetail),
        ViewModelType = typeof(UI.Tabs.ListDetail.ListDetailVM)
    }
...

The resulting feeling is that of a spontaneous flourishing of a GUI from an object, as if its nature is naturally manifesting itself through the code.

If nothing else, you now know how I love languages and puns 😀

Some time later, I discover Naked Objects Framework, finding out that I was re-discovering some of the same principles. To me, it sounded like the confirmation of having chosen the right path.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_objects
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_user_interface

(If you want more information about the project, write to info@teksistemi.com)

Emotions, Music, English

The fading dream

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I want a story, built memories
accumulated places, smiles, sun streams through lashes
be allowed to cherish
be cherished in return.
I feel, I feel all the time
it’s not just melancholy
invisible strings tying me to all
tugging at my heart
an itch I cannot scratch
a silent music,
a sunset unobserved.
A leaning tree,
is his bending fatigue or comfort?
Drink at my shadow, sleep at my feet,
lend me your dreams, of them I’ll take good care,
I will tuck you in with them, with a sparkle of my own.
Pink flowers blossoming down on your music,
warm air sweetly swirling,
bending, welcoming.
Give me back my time, my story, my life, my youth, my vigor,
all of which, everything and yet more again,
meant to be surrendered, to you.

English, Ideas

Wondering In The Dark

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The importance of a map

We might say a map is a representation of something else. A pirate’s map would represent an island or a strand, with a red X to mark the supposed location of the treasure chest. A navigation system in your phone, coupled with a map, performs a similar function in a much more refined and precise way; yet the principle is the same.

Which or what is the map of reality? Even better, allow me to ask: what reality really IS?

Such an ambitious query.

Let’s refer, for simplicity, just to the “mere” physical universe.
Armed with their senses, wits and guts, men and women advanced our collective knowledge of the portions of universe we can experience. The entire corpus of human knowledge, it’s actually another map. Or, as scientists would say, a model, or a series, structure, organism thereof.

They taught me that’s what science’s about. Observe, construct hypothesis, predictions, then craft experiments to verify them. Determine what’s true. And that is simply amazing, astonishing; just thinking about the technology involved in the creation and peruse of this article is staggering: the whole tech tree from the first tool ever made to telecommunication, microprocessors and whatnot… unbelievable.
And yet, something baffles me even more, or to better say, on another level or dimension. All that has ever been discovered, achieved and built… is based on a kind of a dream.
Not that is unreal, no. It’s the reality itself that poses a problem.
We achieve titanic feats, as well as menial tasks, by making use of an insanely complex technology (and ridiculously immense computational power), which exploits the measurable and predictable effects of this or that physical phenomenon.

What’s strange with this?
Let me quote Richard Feynman: “It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy IS.”

Even if scientific models get increasingly refined and become more and more precise or efficient, they are still – and always will be – models, or maps, of something else, something bigger, wider and fundamentally weird. The universe. Reality.

We aren’t able to grasp not even what energy is, one of the things we take for granted the most. We use it every day. We store it in batteries, extract it from many sources, understand that it equals mass times the squared speed of light; we literally breathe and metabolize it, we use it do write and display this article, we use it to think about the words in this article, and yet, no one knows exactly what it is, what it’s made of, its substance or nature.
We are familiar with its many manifestation – heat, electricity, movement or potential and so on – but those are all effects, symptoms of its working.

And what about time?

We don’t even agree on what space is.

We might bluntly reduce and approximate with this: you need not be a mechanic nor an engineer to drive your car. It works. That’s what matters for most people. But ultimately, it’s the act of wondering on the nature of things that allows mankind to shed some light on this or that aspect.

This light is nothing more than a matchstick burning in a dark cave at night. It’s all we have. And it is exhilarating.

So we keep wondering, wondering in the dark.

“He has even put eternity in their heart; yet mankind will never find out the work that the true God has made from start to finish.” – Ecclesiastes 3: 11

English

Coffee Cold

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There is a bar in my town… there are many, actually. Some of them are good, some of them I still think of as my own.
Cozy or trendy places, always watching a considerable amount of people coming and going every day.
Some are fancy, some are very humble. Many stories live in there, the owners or the workers like little mirrors in the afteroons of your days.
It’s a series of nice places, where so many ordinarily special things happen.
There is one thing they have in common. Other than the people (and a good story, of course).

The Coffee.

The Coffee, with a capital C, is an institution. Is something to respect, to admire, to know and discern, to enjoy with awareness, being it gobbled down avidly or slowly, sensuosly sipped.
The coffee is important around here.

Every barista who is at least a little proud of his trade, boasts in his coffee-making skills. It’s a technique, yet it’s more than that, it’s an art.

Don’t be fooled by this general mood of connoisseurism, though.
Only few selected places can provide the Coffee with the capital C.
There’s a huge literature about this, I’m sure, as well as an oral tradition. A feather in the cap of that silly nation I happen to be from.
So I won’t be verbose about this.

Oh, did I mention that the one and only Coffee is the Espresso? Silly me, it still feels obvious to me.

Of course there is Cappuccino, Caffè Macchiato, Latte Macchiato, Caffelatte, even Marocchino, Ginseng, and so on, you name it.
But when you say “let’s go get a coffee”, there is one thing in the mind of the bystanders: the fabled ceramic little cup with just enough of that precious, slightly foamy, smoking fluid which we use to call, once again, “Coffee”.

And the smell? The smell of roasting coffee beans is legendary. But I’m digressing.

I have a thing for ceramic cups, you know?
There is a specific thickness that grants the best results when enjoying an espresso.
Most people ignore the reasons, but it has to do with thermal inertia and conductivity, respectively.
And to think that there is a whole category of persons who require to have an espresso “al vetro” – to the glass, namely, in a little glass. Blasphemy.

The very very vast majority uses to put sugar in it, and not just a little sometimes. The purists, like I myself a little am, train themselves to take it black. To taste it entirely, completely, with no adulteration, in all its precious and glorious aroma.

Then, there is the rule of the 3 Cs, which I cannot quote nor translate adequately, three words starting with c that can be roughly translated as the 3 Hs: “Hell, How Hot!”

A proper coffee shouldn’t have time to cool off at all. It wouldn’t be strange if, say you forget to drink it distracted by something else, the barista would silently take it back, throw it away, then brew another one when you’re ready.

Even in summer, when it’s sunny and hot, espressos would still be served, and consumed, piping hot.

There is an exception though.
And here you can imagine the curve on a cartesian plane, with temperature of the coffee on the y axis and air temperature on the x. It would resemble a step, slightly rounded. A discreet switching between two polarities.
The fancy “caffè freddo” – cold coffee, where cool is meant as ice-cool (or at least fridge-cool).
In other words, you go from a hot espresso in almost any circumstances, to a cool refreshing, lighter but longer cold coffee in the hottest days of the year (which to me correspond to the whole summer, rounding upwards).
The baristas use to prepare big bottles of this concoction, using long espresso, or coffee and water, or ice, and sugar, shaking it all, and leaving it chilling in the fridge.
It’s like a second class coffee. Made for when you don’t have the guts to handle a proper Espresso.
I enjoy it though.

Of course it doesn’t exist here. There is no reason to, after all.

But the room temperature coffee, from where I am from, is a blasphemy everyone agrees to condemn. Ceramic guys like me, glass people, fancy macchiato people, spiked coffee users, vegans and flat-earthers: probably even toddlers are disgusted at the thought.

—

Then, another image comes to my mind.
Afternoon, lazy afternoon or an ordinary warm day.
Parents taking the proverbial after lunch nap. For some reason you are awake, and roaming the house.
Maybe it’s the silence, the quiet. The cat is sleeping too on the kitchen chair, right in that spot where the risk of being stroked is minimized, and where she can better intercept the feeble draft coming from the window open wide.
The sun hits the sun shade on the balcony, its power very poorly restrained by the dark fabric.
Items from the lunch have remained on the table. You haven’t carried out completely (yet) the chore assigned to you by your mother.
The table cloth with random breadcrumbs on it. A glass, a couple of dirty paper napkins. A rounded knife. The empty bottle of wine. The butt of the salami you almost finished.

More stuff is on the stove and the kitchen counter. It bothers you, seeing it, and you don’t know if it more or less so than the thought of it.
The coffee machine is there too, with its funny, indifferent stance. Black elbow on the hip, metal chin up.
You don’t like moka coffee very much. (There’s only one Coffee, with a capital c… The words start flowing in your head once again).
But you know, coffee is always coffee after all, and where’s no espresso maker, a moka can make your day.
Before rinsing it (NEVER wash a moka!) and putting it away, you open the lid.
There is still some coffee there.

Room temperature, summer, hazy, dazey coffee.

And it’s just perfect.

Emotions, Music, English

Life of a drop

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One in many.

Tiny, suspended, unbeknownst.

Awaking from a dream, rising from the vast dark.

One between many. Countless, in all directions. Apparently identical.

Together, we are the cloud. Shapeless, unbound, yet defined.

I am one, I am many, I am one and only, and alone.

The wind is my horse, carrying me and shaping us.

I watch little things from afar, and gaze at the immense up above, suspended in between worlds, dream and reality, earth and sky, life and death.

I roam seemingly without a destination, a constant permutation. I gather the thoughts of men and shape their fantasies.

Who decides when the time comes? What triggers the inescapable? Unfathomable chain of events.

We encounter our fate in a moment. We collapse as one, remembering we have weight too. Unescapable, frightening, exciting, dreadful, joyful, life bringer, devastating, warm, cold.

In that moment verticality becomes my nature. Gravity is a tight steel rope flinging me down. I stretch, embodying dynamics.

You cannot see me coming, yet you cannot ignore me. We are everywhere, filling the air, thousand needles unsuccesfully trying to pierce the world.

I fall for an eternity, my time marked by the lightning. An alien landscape, my next destination, another life, another step in this perpetual cycle of death and rebirth.

Buildings, roads, traffic lights, people, animals, grass, rocks, even umbrellas. Suddenly, we are everywhere. We coat everything in every direction, we seep through, we impregnate.

We sing as a choir. We sing to a secret music only few can discern. And even fewer dance to it.

Emotions, Music

L’atelier dei fiori secchi

1 Comment

benvenuti
all’atelier dei fiori secchi
badate a dove mettete i piedi
e gli occhi

alcuni sono qui da oggi
di altri son rimaste solo foglie
in barattoli, libri e quadri,
segni, segnati e segnanti,
sognati

è una stanza piena di sole
anche d’inverno
e di rado vede qualcuno

colori che il tempo sfuma
forme non realizzate
sentimenti che vivevano
e aspirazioni mancate

tra la nostalgia della nostalgia
e tra il d’amor amore
venite, venite a vedere
il meticoloso collezionare

uno spiffero, un fremito
non risvegli ciò che è sopito

il fuoco…
non sono abbastanza ardito