A Pirate Disguised as a Lady

On the border with Kyrgyzstan. Armfuls of irises, apricots that look like plums, housed in a home where they dye felt.

When statements are made such as: “I love roses”, or, “I prefer sunrise to sunset”, it would be better to be reckless and say that it is the roses that love us, that it is the dawn that prefers us.

If we think we love roses and sunrises it is only because they let themselves be seen, they manifested themselves to us. Admitting this reality requires a leap of faith into the unknown.

I met Isabella in 2009 thanks to an incredible sequence of international coincidences and intersections that brought me back to Rome from Paris, where I was living at the time.

At the time Isabella wanted to write and I wanted to be an artist. In a certain sense, I wrote (because I translated) and she was an artist.

We spoke to each other for hours on end over the years. Isabella taught me many things, one of these was to identify and abandon do-goodism, which is probably one of the greatest enemies of intellectual honesty, amongst others.

The passages I read come from one of Isabella's books that I was lucky enough to transcribe in a sort of journal.

For me Isabella is the eternal girl and also a pirate disguised as a lady.