Certainly, only maturity makes us understand something that is very good by itself, and that we did not see before when it was offered to us. When we are young, we are sometimes shy, so much so that we let honey run through our fingers. We are unable to extract the grace and sweetness from […]

Once upon a time… Although with a name of a king’s daughter – Sarah –, or Solly as nickname (expected one and popular) for the young lady Sarah, who Joe first met at graduate college, at the beginning of his studies, during an afternoon at the Fran´s coffee bar. She was researching on some similar […]

Joe was widowed in the broadest sense. He wanted a partner, but in the face of his downfalls he was quite reticent: “She would have to be someone spectacular, perfect”. Under these circumstances, since he rarely socialized, he would be left, without realizing it, with the chance at an event that taking place annually among […]

I have often heard conversations about couples who, because the wife and husband were so attached to each other, when one passed away, the other would fall into a deep depression and soon leave this life. I have never really attached myself to this type of conjecture. Instead, when asked how I would behave after […]

This is the tale of a fifteen-year-old guy falling in love to a thirteen-year-old girl. Two kids! Would be love without borders? That’s true? Or love is a hallway, where there are gondolas that offer us, in addition to beauty, character, dignity, decency, simplicity, kindness, reciprocal emotions, and other good things, to be explored? And […]

Joe told me a rather unusual fact that has stayed with me forever. Some weeks after starting his first relationship, during a Saturday afternoon (when the beauty’s mother allowed them to meet), they decided to visit a neighbor who was a sort of moral, intellectual and psychological guide for the neighborhood; in principle, a little […]

Joannette Ophenafor was a production chief at a generics pharmaceutical laboratory; a woman in her early middle age, quite insubordinate, a careerist, who acted in a cunning manner. She had an unpleasant appearance, as she had thick features, disfigured by so much sycophancy, and walked inelegantly and was always poorly dressed. The best description for […]

“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope..” (Maya Angelou, writer, american born in S. LOuis, Missouri) There are many stories with the same final moral lesson. In the case of human love and sexuality, the breadth of reactions I encountered allowed me not […]

“You never forget your fourth girlfriend” (an expanded paraphrase of a popular saying) One Friday I decided to have a few pale ales at a pub in Saint Paul and then enjoy a Neapolitan pizza from Punch Pizza, which was very close by and was a pleasant surprise in the US west. However, it was […]

“Forgetfulness is a form of freedom.” (Khalil Gibran) “Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.” (Friedrich Nietzsche) Monalisa (not the Da Vinci masterpiece, but somehow her parents distinctive work…) dated Joe Thales for about fifth three months, with their ups and downs, and, contrary to the assessments of some […]

“You never forget your first bra!” (Washington Olivetto, 1987) “Love that is a curse, love that pierce, love that remain” (author and era unknown) “Drill´s love, still forever love” (idem, optional Version) Die erste Liebe ist vorzüglich The invitation to a party that was going to be held downtown was made by a university colleague, […]

Jane was a girl who stood out in the group. I believe that this is why many other girls, as one could see, suffered from joint pain between the humerus and the ulna when seeing or hearing her. She stood out in several ways: in her graceful speech (her diction, correct pronunciation and sweetness) and […]

“Commitment is the promise of a love that never fades.” (Popular adage) That morning, I was giving a regular class when something unusual happened at the end of my lecture. One of the students, sitting right in front of me, while the others gathered their belongings and left the classroom, addressed me. He told me […]

“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.” (Diane Arbus, photographer, born New York, 1923) In French, the entry or expression “déjà-vu” has a primary meaning of ‘what is familiar, of what is not new’ (“Ce qui n’est pas nouveau“), in addition to the more figurative […]

Sometimes, after attending Sunday night mass, Joe would take his girlfriend to eat pizza at Woulddo Lime Street, which was about three miles from the parish they attended. Although it had the (angelical) Italian name Raffaeluccio, at the time it was a place that offered something acceptable and digestible, although not a verace Neapolitan pizza. […]

Lower middle class residential area. After consulting an on-call astrologer and an amateur poet, who lived near the drooling resident of #96, Joe was notified that the chaste girl Nikole Mandy Beniston, a brunette, who lived in #77, was positioned 180 degrees in the zodiacal plane in relation to his position (one was the sign […]

Joe dated for the first time after entering college, because before that he had no time; he was only studying. A real, real nerd one. He had a childish passion, and had wanted to date a girl before, but fortunately (in his later understanding) it had not worked out, he recalled. He met his first […]

Joe owned a rental apartment building and had some employees in a condominium at Manchester placed near Saint Paul, in a relatively upscale area. In the most modest district of the region, Blossom Village, there was a significant portion of the population that adjusted to jobs that were not specialized, in the noblest areas, and […]

Veneto is one of the twenty administrative regions (equivalent to a federated state) of Italy. It is located in the north-eastern portion, bordering Austria in a small strip of less than twenty miles. It has seven provinces and 563 municipalities. Venice is its administrative center, principal city. Vicenza is the province of origin of my […]

When I was a child, I had the impression that nightclubs were places of general perdition. There was a lot of talk about nightclubs in the 1960s, but they were a place to be ignored by “good people,” according to my family interlocutors. When I told Joe about this, he was impressed by the coincidence […]