TIME IN A NUTSHELL

I'm here, curled up on my knees, keeping on looking at the two halves of the shell which I'm holding in my hands, turning them under my nose. They are intact. I put the two halves very close, side by side, as if to reattach them. The walnut kernel is gone, but the one in my hands still looks like a walnut, an intact walnut.

My kitty comes close me, he stretches his snut over my hands, sniffing the nutshell.

" What do you say, darling? Doesn't it seem that this is an intact walnut? And instead it is only a walnut shell. Inside the shell there is no more the walnut. " My cat, while he keeps on smelling the nutshell, and my fingers too, seems to be nodding at my words. When I see him nodding, ah,

what pleasure for me! And besides my cat is free to nod or not.

The empty and intact nutshell which I keep on turning between my fingers,

makes to come in my mind that it would be perfect as a time capsule.

" What do you think about it darling?" I say, standing up, holding the nutshell softly, between my fingerstips. " Do we put something

precious inside here? Something so much precious that it must be saved"

Now my kitty looks at me in disbelief, leaning his snut upwards.

He seems to be making fun of me, and, at the same time, he is pitying me. " And what would you have so much precious to save, poor you...?" His jocking look, pointed on me, is laughing. " ah, unless you think of me....but , yeah, I'm very much precious " It is as if my cat eyes , and even his snut, and even his whole body were saying, while he is frockling all cheerful , and I seem to hear the tip tap of his velvet, silent little feet.

Ah, to save something of him, of my cat....but of course it immediately

came in my mind. Obviously I can't put my cat into the empty nutshell, and not only because there isn't enough space for him....

But inside the empty shell I can put

something of my cat....something as a tuft of his hair, as pieces of his nails.....Indeed,now, coming to think of nails, but yeah, I can put into this shell also some clipping pf my nails.

For the rest, there is very little space in this empty nutshell which suddenly seemed to me perfect for a time capsule. I'm still looking at it,

holding it, just touching it with my fingertips, under my nose.

The nutshell is perfect on the outside, with those marks engraved on its wood, which seem as carelessly engraved, yet they are just the right ones. And, as I have seen, this nutshell is also perfect inside, where there is still the layer of a kind of coating, which is not of wood, like the shell, which is not even edible, like the kernel, which is soft where the walnut rests, but it has also protusions more leathery, which are the ones that fit into the walnut kernel.

If there was only a very small space inside the nutshell, then why, if I look at it, and I feel like I breathe it, it makes me think of time, all the past time and also all the future time? As the whole universe could enter into this nutshell, not only the universe of the present, but also the universe of the past and that of the future.

Now I detach the two halves of the empty nutshell , then I bring them close to my mouth, then I begin to blow my breath into the inside of the shell.

I feel that my cat is starting to be worried. He is making plaintive meows, while he is rubbing ,agitated,

against my legs, as he does when he wants to reassure me that he is here, near me, that I can count on him.

While I'm blowing my breath into the nutshell, ah__ I say myself__if it were possible, once closed this nutshell, make it fly....Who knows it could not happen it reached, even in the distant future, some place in the universe where there was someone__someone or something__who could understand, listening to my breath, the enormous injustice to which I was condemned for a life. My breath, which I blew into the walnut shell, my time capsule, I'm sure that even in millions of years it will be able to tell, to those who will listen to it, the accumulation of suffering to which I have been subjected in a country considered civil....but it is not civil, since it does not recognize fundamental individual freedoms, like not being spied continuously, even when you go to the bathroom, even when you are writing.

Before closing the nutshell, I put also a tuft of my cat hair and a piece

of my nail into it. Then, after having closed

it, or rather sealed it, by reattaching the two halves with a very strong glue, I wonder where I can put it.

Sure, I would like, oh, very much! to launch my time capsule in flight....but how to do? besides, I don't like at all the idea of buryng it

under ground .

I come out , with my nutshell in my hand, I'm holding it tight , so that I can feel it in my hand, and I go for the countryside. My cat follows me, walking behind me and meowing. After a little time, he comes before me and starts to walk, preceding me.

Every now and then he turns his snut

towards me, as if to be sure i am there. It seems to me my cat is trying

to point me something.

I keeps on walking behind him, wondering where I can put the nutshell. Sighing, I look up by chance and I see a big airplane above, it seems to come out from behind a white cloud. Strange, I cannot help but think...strange , the airplane seems to fly quite low and yet no noise is heard.

I stop to walk and, holding the nutshell on the outstretched palm of my hand,I look upwards at the big gray airplane which...but...not only makes no noise,it also doesn't seem to move. Oh, but is it a real airplane or...or just an apparition? I ask myself. Meantime also my cat is with his nose up, he seems to be looking at the airplane. Ah, then, if also the cat is looking at the airplane,

it means that the airplane is real___I think. But why it doesn't move? I keep on wondering, more than perplexed.

And suddenly it seems to me to understand why the big plane can stay still up there, as if suspended in the air. But certain, that airplane, which I can see, and my cat can see it too, can stay as if supended above us, without moving, since....it really exists...and it is there up above us, but...it belongs to another time, it comes from another time.

I am amazed and incredulous, and yet it must be really like this...that airplane comes from another time.

While I 'm repeating this ...conviction, I istinctively stretch out forwards my hand with the palm outstretched

upwards. Suddenly , at all unexpectedly I see, in the same instant the nutshell rising up in the sky, higher and higher____even if I could not see it when it took off from the palm of my hand___and the big

airplane disappearing.