Writer and journalist

Struggle and grace

A vase, a dress, a book, a square, an old mansion, a country path, a farmhouse, a century-old spinning wheel, a curve of a hill or an old lamp: all beautiful things should be restorable, they must be.

Even a relationship, a feeling, a friendship, a memory or the quiet of a wood and of a glance, a day of “spleen”. Because we should save the grace that is in us and around us, in the objects and the things that we love and that call out to be loved, the things that give us harmony.
Because restoration is also solace, it is the rest after effort, the flight from disorder towards serenity and beauty.

Restoration is difficult but it is the only chance left to us: it is the fight against vulgarity, against negligence and cynicism and the fight against mass production and anodised aluminium, the fight against the cancer of arrogance and asbestos cement, against the greed for money, consumption and feelings. Already many things are a damage, in life - the time that passes, our fragility, our vices – the only hope is to
restore, to knock down and to raise up, to raise one’s guard against insults and the fatuous, against what is useless, against “books without words and music that has no ears”, against offences to the eyes.

Restoration is comfort and survival, it is the defence of what is unique, not mass produced, unrepeatable; true like a sincere smile, not one coated in plastic. Restoration is rest, recouping energies. It is the autumn of things, an autumn
that finds us again, restores and renews us. It is the tale that follows us and consoles us, before darkness falls. It is the fairy tale to listen to before falling asleep to comfort us from the darkness that awaits us. Restore us, recount to us, teach us the long road to get to having a little pity for man and things. Teach us to say, like George Bernanos at the end of “Diary of a Country Priest”: “What does it matter?
All is grace”.

Carlo Grande