Ossigeno

a l n o c c i o l o 38 Let's start with its tree: pre-existent to man and excluded from the Garden of Eden . It is therefore easy to imagine it while waiting for Adam there, outside Heaven’s boundaries. Waiting for his expulsion. In this part of creation where sin is consigned to atonement. As if it knew. As if it wanted to give him a clue to find, if not Heaven, at least himself . And to find it, finally, this Paradise Lost , instead of outside, right within himself. And in consideration of the work necessary to enter before, and to find something within then, the walnut could not have had a more fitting meaning: protected from the eyes of laymen . Therefore sacred , if laymen are the others. As well as sacred is everything taking place in any form of interiority, away from prying eyes. Sacred because preserved , thus. Neither because hidden, nor because closed, but because constantly guarded. By the one responsible for the ongoing process. With an attention that, projected to infinity, meets and merges with devotion. That is how self should be preserved. To it one should be devoted, in it one should always believe. In its name all the rest, if necessary, should be sacrificed. With constant attention, and a walnut in your pocket. Because it is also an amulet against evil eye . And eyes can be evil, as well as prying. Sacred, so therefore definable: something inside of something else preserving it, so that it can continue to be so . Something else equally closed, just because it has to be disclosed. Equally hidden , just because it has to reveal. Walnuts, in fact, are indehiscent : they do not open spontaneously when they come to maturity. You have to search for that seed, after having broken everything around and outside. Or after that everything got finally broken by itself, leaving us with nothing but what it is inside. Just like, in order to find yourself, you have to look from the inside . And to continue to preserve, after having found it, your own core. Constantly observing it, conceiving it as a beacon in the dark when it is necessary to break the shell of all the comfort zones we inhabit outside and inside our mind. For when there is the core, there is everything. Body, mind and spirit : the sacred ternary that the walnut has always been. And if by ‘walnut’ we synecdochally mean the kernel , and if in the kernel we recognize the brain due to their shameless likeness, then it is easy to say: when there is the thought, there is everything . There is a healthy body and there is the spirit in which it is wrapped. And all three things communicate with each other. Because there is a path between mind and spirit, and that path lies in that point of the body called brain . To keep healthy, in order to keep also an healthy thought. That is the mission of walnut, once broken and eaten. To keep an healthy brain , both the right and the left hemisphere. To combine their functions in a thought action capable of overcoming the brain itself [body] in order to connect it to the spirit. In a leap of faith where creativity and logic support one another, instead of contradicting each other, to the point of unearthing and meeting a self to believe in, a self to be trusted.