For me, Ischia is simply the most beautiful place in the World. A place of the soul capable, at the same time, of opening the curtain on the landscapes of the soul and in the soul. It is the place where the sea does not isolate but protects. It is a continuous revelation of beauty of which each person should be a custodian and ambassador.
It is a blue trunk that becomes a treasure chest of continuous and unceasing discoveries of surprising human wonders.
Here you happen to meet Michele, who – barely knowing you – stops you on the street and, reading in your eyes the devouring passion for the place, industries himself to give you a book on the Church of the Holy Spirit, which reveals to you the treasure of cooperation and social cohesion among the sailors of the Borgo di Celsa who, since the 15th century, shared the art of the sea, its fortunes and salty gifts by making, in part, a common fund, anticipating the values of social solidarity and equality by devoting themselves to the ransom of slaves, help in dowries for maidens to be married, health care for the less well-off, and the demolition of inequalities.
Only in Ponte is Barbara’s bookstore where-even in February, at ten o’clock at night, when it is even darker and the sea has reclaimed its living space on the forecourt, leaving it necklaces of salted seaweed as gifts-you find a beacon lit in your personal blizzard and a warm cup of words that make you feel more at home than at home. So, even you feel lonely as a sob, you see a fallen star on a chair to share your company.
Only here are myriad cultural paths where you meet Antoinette who gives you, in advice, books that nourish you, like bread, of a thought that knows how to think to be savored in thousands of sweet stops on moving rocks; and again Lello who, at the scent of a coffee, simplifies the complexity of theology for you.
As you walk down the side streets, you come across the vocal excitement of a paranza of fishermen of ideas, captained by Raffaele Mirelli, a commander who, with his crew, fishes out the pearls of a wondrous, fabulous, magical philosophy festival every year. Then we come to Marco who captures, on the finale, beauty and imagery.
Only here on December 25, while you are taking a swim in the Maronti and reflecting on the temperature of your madness, do you see Alberto passing by in a canoe and exchange, among the decorated waves, Christmas greetings, discovering that, on this island, there is not only the relativity of time but also the meteorological relativity of weather that goes crazy with joy and, only if you are so in love as to believe it, makes you feel on the day of assumption .
Only in this place is there a living Castle, inhabited by Angels, and who make you discover that, in the most beautiful place in the World (Ischia), there is the most beautiful place (the Aragonese Castle). And again when you meet people who offer you, on the tray of a terrace, the most beautiful sunsets your weary eyes have ever seen: those of the Michelangelo’s terrace that clutch your heart in their fist and have it returned only by the moon when the sun takes leave of it, leaving it behind. Ischia, if you really love it, lives you, lets itself live and, if you need it, gives you back to life, calls you and answers you, binds you and sets you free, forces you, in a spell of beauty, to stay there movably still for as long as you can, making your place in the World where you are never alone.
It may be iconoclastic but if I had to picture heaven I would imagine it here.
