I am still that little boy whose features are not quite distinguishable, softened by the shade of the tall trees and the light of an Italian sun from another time. Frozen on this road in Quaglietta, the village of my maternal grandparents, I remain forever suspended in a silhouette softened by time, the quiet center of an otherwise motionless world.
This is where the mirror effect begins. I am not merely the subject I once was, a record printed on a photograph with its old-fashioned scalloped edges. I have become the witness to my own existence, the one who now leans over the image, his gaze meeting, across the decades, the eyes of a child who knew nothing of what was to come.
I look at myself from my own point of view, with a strange double awareness: I am here, in the present looking back, and there, on that shaded road, inside the purity of a frozen moment.
My features remain blurred, almost anonymous to a stranger, but to me, the recognition is immediate. The face has faded a little, but the thread of consciousness has never been broken. I am still there, caught in the light of Quaglietta, watching the adult I have become while contemplating the child I once was.
