How can I resist?
The long way towards San Remo, which began several months ago with the choice of the stone to be exhibited at UBI Congress and of the matching elements, this year had necessarilly to include a pause in the areas where it is probably easier to find beautiful stones. I underline it because it is not obvious or easy to find beautiful stones: beyond the knowledge of areas, types and materials we also need a good deal of luck!
However, an early Spring has facilitated my programs, allowing me to spend two days in the hinterland of Lavagna, in the midst of an untouched nature together with my friend and partner Mr. Felice Colombari.

We devoted two days of hunting to the streams, looking for stones which had their forms shaped by the incessant action of water. It 's a very nice kind of research: the banks offer a variety of stones to be looked at, selected and evaluated.

Regenerated and in better spirits, with a boot full of stones, I went to San Remo for a different kind of experience, to live another moment in the life of a stone: the display as suiseki.

The excluded stones

Now I stop working as a reporter to comment on the stone by Mrs. Luciana Queirolo: in the picture taken from afar which allows us to admire the tokonoma as a whole, does it look like an animal? a rugged landscape? what else? Undoubtedly, this stone with a not immediate interpretation immobilizes us in a personal observation and evocation. Then a closer view allows to discover a rough area, crevices and hiding places, caves and shelters, which I hope I caught in my pictures.

With her boundless curiosity, Luciana also proposed pictures showing similarities between Western and Eastern material: in conclusion, "The Earth is round!"
Eventually Luciana also read some statements by the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky, who in "The Spiritual in Art" tells about a pictorial art based on the language of colour: in it Kandinsky gives information on the emotional properties of each tone and colour, linking them to the response of the soul. "White is the conventional sum of all the colours of the rainbow but it's a world where all these colours have disappeared. As a matter of fact it is a wall of absolute silence, inwardly we feel it as a non-sound. However, it is a silence of birth, full of potential; it is the pause between a bar and the other in a musical performance which presages other sounds. Black is the absence of light, it is a non-colour,it is off like a completely burned fire. It is a silence of death, it is the final pause of a musical performance, however, unlike white (where the colour inside is already weak) it brings out any colour .... A pictorial composition is formed by colour which, in spite of being limitless in our mind, also assumes a shape in reality. Colour and shape can not exist separately in a composition. The combination of form and colour is based on the special relationship between individual forms and individual colours. If a colour is associated with its privileged form, the effects and emotions arising from colours and shape are enhanced. "

Snack, quick change of clothes and a large group of Suiseki lovers was ready for the hike in the afternoon: Mr. Fabrizio Beltrame led us near Imperia, in search of local stones, usually sandstone, but also the rarest palombino.

And almost without realizing it, it was time for the gala dinner which was held in the elegant rooms of the Casino of Sanremo. It 's the classic moment of waiting and awards but also when you can relax and appreciate food, company and good music. The organizing club also provided admission to the halls of the casino and one free chip to try the luck.

It could be all but it is not: how is it possible to describe the rumours, comparisons, meetings, projects, disappointment, rewards but also the criticisms that are always useful when they are constructive? A Congress is made up of many of these moments and just counting prizes debases its meaning.
Our friend Mr. Fabrizio Petruzzello was elected in the new Board. To him we wish good work. To you all, however, faithful or casual readers of these pages, goodbye, hopefully personally, to Arco di Trento, for the next edition of the U.B.I. Congress .