In our visceral impetus to give meaning to our temporal existence, more often than none, we distort our perception of reality to add momentary euphoria to our often mundane life cycles. In order words, we bestow credence to what does not exist. Doing so, we create illusions of malleable well-being.
One of my illusions is the Befana, celebrated yearly twelve days after Christmas. Well? It took the three Magi a while to get to Bethlehem, right? It made sense. What did not make any sense was how the celebration evolved when I dug into my stocking.
I knew that it (the stocking) brought by the hypothetical Befana would be filled with either sweets or charcoal.
The abundance of each depended on good or bad deeds through the preceding year. If children performed good deeds, they would receive sweets. On the other end, if they committed evil, they would be the recipients of charcoal.
You must know that I strived during the year to perform good deeds. Did I do it to receive sweets? No! It just felt virtuous to do good deeds. That's it. So, given this genuine sentiment, you must sympathize with me when I dug into my stocking to find mostly charcoal.
How could that be? Why all that charcoal? If my being 'good' was not good enough, what would good possibly be? I was truly mesmerized and shocked by my mom's decision.
Many years later, my mom told me the truth. She did not have sufficient money available to buy sweets. Instead, with the cash she had, she purchased the less expensive item: charcoal. We flamed it to keep us warm during the night. And the smaller portion of sweets? They were mostly biscotti. We dipped them in our traditional steaming caffe latte.
Both charcoal and biscotti served a common good: the well being of the family.
As we should, in our interpretation of life, we discriminate the good from evil. However, from a universal perspective, good and evil are inseparable and inevitable. Humans live the consequences derived from the combustion of good and evil. Evil evolves as the pejorative diminutive of the overall goodness of the universe. Shouldn't we call our stance with our surroundings neutrality? It is up to us to turn that neutrality into what we project as being good or we perceive as being evil.
Il Carbone, I Biscotti, e La Befana
The Indistinguishable Nature of Good and Evil
Nel buio del'alba
Biscotti inzzuppati
Nel latte e caffe'
Riempito dell'amore della mamma
Nel buio dell'imbrunire
Carbone bruciato
Nel braciere
Colmo dell'amore della mamma
Nel chiaro scuro della notte
Calza zeppa
Di biscotti e carbone
Gonfia dell'amore della mamma
Nel giorno della Befana
Pensiero carico
Di male e bene
Sazio dell'amore della mamma
The Undistinguishable Nature of Good and Evil
La Befana, Il Carbone e I Biscotti
In the dark of dawn
Biscuits soaked
In milk and coffee
Filled with mum's love
In the dark of dusk
Burnt coal
In the brazier
Heaped with mother's love
In the light and dark
Of the night
Wedge socks
Of cookies and coal
Swollen with mom's love
On the day of the Befana
Thinking charged
Of bad and good
Sated with mamma's love
