Sailing Ships

If the sea were a bridge, we wouldn’t need ships. If there were no winds, no waves, no sharks, we could take a walk, one afternoon, you and I, and get to South America, have a coffee, smoke a cigar. It’s a nonsense, and yet we were made to walk on land: why not water?

Because we have limits, that’s why. So God gave us ingenuity, creativity; to us Italians, then, well … he really provided quite a bit.

So we built the ships, so that they would unite the continents, to facilitate the exchange of goods and mingle people: bridges, but moving. Some ships are so beautiful that we painted them, some inspired songs for us, and then there’s the Amerigo Vespucci. The quintessential sailing ship, the wooden (and textile) depiction of Italian craftsmanship. To it (to her!) we dedicated the cover of the first issue of the magazine you hold in your hands, ambassador among ambassadors.

Because in this time, which returns every time man has a short memory, we need dialogue. We need bread, air and dialogue. If you do not have this magazine in your hand, thank you anyway, but let me say: it is not the same. If you touch it you can feel the feel of the paper, and on the paper the words are printed, and each word has been weighed, thought about, presented. Words want to exist in this real dimension and have the power to create reality and make it exist, as well as shape it. The verb, the λόγος, is the origin of everything and everything originates. And so the dia-logue must prevail again, as confrontation and resolution, as a galleon that faces the sea and brings us together, carrying a message of culture and tolerance. But first we need respect, of the human being, of the human being that is in the other and in that which is in ourselves because, if we do not initiate a dialogue, it is probably because, deep down, we do not respect ourselves. If we did we would want a better world than that, wouldn’t we? We would have words for our dialogue and they would be, “I am because we are.” It’s not Catholicism, it’s African tribal tradition, but even Pope Leo XIV said we must be one people and we must disarm words. Because words are needed, but the right ones: the ones that are bridges and not fences; that are not bombs. They are sailing ships.