Difficult Loves

by Italo Calvino

It is only when they have the photos before their eyes that they seem to take tangible possession of the day they spent, only then that the mountain stream, the movement of the child with his pail, the glint of the sun on the wife’s legs, take on the irrevocability of what has been and can no longer be doubted. Everything else can drown in the unreliable shadow of memory.

The minute you start saying something—‘Ah, how beautiful! We must photograph it!’—you are already close to the view of the person who thinks that everything that is not photographed is lost, as if it had never existed, and that therefore, in order really to live, you must photograph as much as you can, and to photograph as much as you can you must either live in the most photographable way possible or else consider photographable every moment of your life. The first course leads to stupidity, the second to madness.” “You’re the one who’s mad and stupid,” his friends would say to him, “and a pain in the ass into the bargain.”

He had to follow the opposite path: aim at a portrait completely on the surface, evident, unequivocal, that did not elude conventional appearance, the stereotype, the mask. The mask, being first of all a social, historical product, contains more truth than any image claiming to be “true”;

In fact every silence consists of the network of minuscule sounds that enfolds it: the silence of the island was distinct from that of the calm sea surrounding it

That was a time when I didn’t give a damn about anything, the period when I came to settle in this city. “Settle” is the wrong term. I had no desire to be settled in any sense;

the executive who keeps his desk completely clear is a man who never lets matters pile up, who starts every problem on the road to its solution.

:))

In other words, I loved her. And I was unhappy. But how could she have understood this unhappiness of mine? There are those who condemn themselves to the most gray, mediocre life because they have suffered some grief, some misfortune; but there are also those who do the same thing because their good fortune is greater than they feel they can sustain.

it’s easy enough to strike up an acquaintance, but then you’re involved; somebody says, “What’s on this evening?” and you end up all together watching television or going to the movies, and after that evening you’re caught up in a group of people who mean nothing to you, and you have to tell them your business and listen to theirs. I

ancient beauty is powerless against new ugliness.)