“More than meets the eye”
It shines brightly, suspended in a night that smells of jasmine. It opens up before me as I savor a spoonful of zabaione cream with my eyes half-closed, turning the quiet corner of the street toward home. It is perched upon an iron skeleton, appearing to warm it shyly, much like the dawn sun warms the sand chilled by the rough, 3:00 AM swell of the tide.
The magnolia blooms before it covers itself in leaves. It stands exposed, its soft, fragrant, delicate petals completely unsheltered. Nothing to wrap them, nothing to protect them, nothing to stroke them while holding their hand. Yet, it is sensitive to the cold, to the frosts that could ruin those star-shaped flowers that transition from white to purple. But it loves the full sun so much that it stands there courageously, its bud stretching toward the infinite, claiming the rays it deserves. This is the price it pays: stripping its precious treasure bare to reach what gives it life and makes it explode into its own essence.
I read about this a few days ago while searching for answers among flowers, somewhere between a daisy that tastes of home and first love, and the small cactus by my window that gifts me a flower only once in a full orbit around the sun. If I’m lucky, I wake up to find it there waiting for me, red with life. It waits for that exact moment: when the words are full, when the air is right, when it is time to show itself. But the cactus is another story.
Back to the magnolia and its naked flowers. Well, I thought: is she crazy? What are you doing, trusting the midday sun? Don’t you know that when you least expect it, a gust of cold wind comes along? Brrr, run, grab a scarf, a sweater, a shawl, I don’t know, that jacket you always carry around just “in case it gets cold.”
And then that sign returned, large and imposing, a white light in the black night. Letters aligned vertically, a reminder that art, language, and image are small parts of one another, together composing a thought or rather, giving birth to it. It’s true: there is always something more than meets the eye. Something that goes beyond simple visual perception; something born in that process of transforming external light energy into internal movement. Something that wasn’t there before, and then suddenly is. Something that resembles life.
I realized that the magnolia acts like the sun when it slowly vanishes over the western horizon, plunging into this earth and surrendering freely into its arms, certain that its autonomous, full movement will allow it to be reborn, new and even more beautiful, shortly after. And so, she does the same: she trusts first and entrusts herself later, certain there will be a sun waiting to make her bloom. Each of her buds will be alone first, and together with others later, in the endeavor of being and creating life.
These are strange times. The calendar tells me it’s spring, but the world seems to be living through an endless, storm-tossed winter. A few days ago, I was walking with my head toward the sun, looking for warmth and perhaps hoping to bloom myself, until I finally found my magnolia. It took the form of graffiti on a white, yellow, and black “work in progress” billboard. It said: “nothing personal, everything collective.” Bingo.
About a year ago, the “No Kings” movement was born in the United States on President’s Day, as a civic and political response to the choices of the Trump administration. Its goal is to “denounce the erosion of civil liberties, the political use of the military, and the rhetoric of law and order as tools of repression, claiming a pluralist and inclusive vision of society and joining democratic mobilizations against authoritarianism.”
The movement began in the USA but has extended its reach to Europe (London, Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, Lisbon, etc.) and to Italy. In Rome (and elsewhere), various meetings and initiatives were organized, including a concert featuring numerous Italian artists and a massive peaceful demonstration. A common goal, a convergence of different realities, aimed at transforming a shared, widespread feeling into a field of action, a universal chessboard on which to “checkmate the kings.”
It cannot be a coincidence that I read that graffiti in the very place where thousands of people sang, danced, acted, and participated in that concert, eight consecutive hours of music, with the intention of saying a clear “no” to the “kings and their wars.”
Thousands of people who, like magnolia buds certain of themselves, of a personal idea first and a feeling later, moved toward a common, collective thought. They moved and continue to move toward a new sun. Because even if we are on the other side of the world, in the end, we are all looking at the same moon.
In 1961, on the occasion of the founding of Amnesty International, its founder Peter Benenson spoke, drawing inspiration from a Chinese proverb: “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”
I don’t know if winter is about to end, if the calendar is starting to tell the truth, or if the candles have lit, embraced, and warmed one another. But the air feels lukewarm, and the magnolias in the parks, in the squares, and along the roadsides, are beginning to bloom.
Susanna Lucatello
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