THE BEGINNING

The forest had given life to unthinkable couplings. Promiscuity was the rule for living together, but it had not yet become a format, and no one had marked what year it was, because Arabic numerals had not yet arrived.

This magnificent creature, who moved like a feline, had no name — only elegance, and a soft, padded step. She had no fixed posture, only style; no way of being, only class. And when she walked, whatever the distance, she gave off a scent that drew every species. Giorgio Armani’s fragrances were not yet on sale: hers came from her own indefinable hormones, like a real orchestra calling in its dues, but without instruments.

Whoever tried to approach her, to collect on a bill that came with no receipt, thought he wanted to be the first — not knowing that she would choose only the last, hoping he would be the one who stayed.

Everything that is not seen is not told, yet people never fail to claim it: they call it noir, or fiction, something with no memory and no connection. Everything no one expects, instead, always lives inside a fantasy, an expectation, someone else’s memory, a possible action — and it shows itself only through the word.

This is the task this site aspires to. It will try, knowing it is not the first or the best — only the pupil in the second-to-last row, and never the last.

Ferdinando