The Ghost World Between Mountains

Formula 1 track in the fog

The weather in Biella was miserable—not just cold, but the kind of cold that settles into your bones and whispers that winter has come to stay.

The Shepherd's Mathematics or The Miracle of Natural Food

I was writing a text for prospects, agricultural companies, offering them a promotion of their products – vegetables, meat, honey, wine... Suddenly, I had the idea to tell it to you as a parable...

The old woman at the market in Biella counts differently than you or I.

She doesn’t count in euros or dollars. She counts in hours—the hours between when her husband’s hands pulled a zucchini from the earth and when it lands, still warm from the morning sun, in your canvas bag.

“Quarantotto,” she says. Forty-eight.

This is the number that matters. Not the price per kilo, but the hours. Because science has proven what these mountain people have always known in their bones: a vegetable begins to forget itself the moment it leaves the soil. Vitamins flee like swallows before winter. The life force drains away, oxidizing into something lesser, something that merely looks like food.

At forty-eight hours, half the vitamin C has vanished into thin air. The folates—those delicate compounds that build our blood—scatter like autumn leaves.

But here, in this corner of Piedmont, where time moves differently, =>>>

Continue reading https://exegi.substack.com/p/the-shepherds-mathematics-or-the

 

Snowlit Milan City Chant

Milan, in this post’s focus, is a beautiful, snowy city, and its secrets are revealed here.

We created this winter song inspired by photos of Milan and Moscow, me and Perplexity

Snowflakes dance on lamplight gold,
City veins in silver cold.
Windows glow, a whispered spell,
Evening’s beauty, pure and fell.
Breathe the frost, embrace the night —
Winter’s kiss, pure delight!

Continue with me on our discovery Milan walk here:

https://exegi.substack.com/p/snowlit-city-chant

To Pass Through the Fog

I wrote this story many years ago, when I was (yet again) in the situation described here. It's happened to me many times. But I still believe it's written accurately.

A small, small, impossibly small man stood before a wall of fog.

It seemed the entire world lay ahead of him—a vast, impossible Universe rising from the earth at his feet and stretching into infinity. These clouds, so voluminous, like immense feather pillows, these billowing masses of fog.

Around him and behind, there was nothing. No one. He stood alone before the infinite. Leaving everything THERE.

There, far away, where no road led back, remained earthly life—so simple, so flawed, so comprehensible and familiar.

He caught himself not fully grasping the finality of this step.

Continue reading https://exegi.substack.com/p/to-pass-through-the-fog

The Land Where Survival Was an Art Form

Life in Italy was never easy. Virtually every place and every period could be included in a survival manual. Let's talk about castle secrets again. Once upon a time, there was a castle... “How do we get into that castle?”

“You can’t,” I said.

The car had stopped beside us on the hill. We looked up at the ruin—another forgotten Avogadro fortress, crumbling behind rusted gates and NO TRESPASSING signs.

The driver nodded and drove off, but the question stayed with me. How do you get in? And more than that: why are there so many castles here that nobody can get into, that nobody even knows about?

It was one of those winter days you wait for all season—actual sunshine, breaking through weeks of fog and rain. I had maybe three hours before the light died, and I was desperate to escape my own head. So I did what any reasonable person does: I opened Google Maps and typed “castles.”

Three popped up. Close together. A loop I could drive in an afternoon.

I grabbed my keys.

Continue reading https://exegi.substack.com/p/the-land-where-survival-was-an-art

A Tale of Tiny Steaks and Smaller Pastries

 Every year between Christmas and New Year's, my friends and I engage in what has become our sacred ritual: eating our way through Piedmont while pretending we're not just avoiding their in-laws. 

Through the Frosted Door: The Scandalous Skirts of Saint-Pierre

Guarded by carved oak against winter's bite, a bas-relief freezes 1400s nobility: stern lords flank ladies in shockingly short tunics. No trailing velvet trains; these hems skim the knee. Why? 

 This story is my interpretation of the Saint-Pierre bas-relief on a door in the castle. Tourists visiting the castle do not notice its protagonists, and the guides don’t know what to say to you. They did not see it really. But there is an answer: medieval life was not quite the same as we imagine it from the ceremonial medieval pictures.

The October wind had teeth that morning when Caterina de Challant slipped through the postern gate of Ussel, her mare already saddled and stamping in the shadows. Behind her, in the castle’s great hall, her uncle’s men would be arriving within the hour, riding up the main road with documents and armed escorts, ready to strip her of yet another inheritance. But Caterina had learned to read the rhythms of ambush and lawsuit as other women read psalters.

Continue reading this story https://exegi.substack.com/p/through-the-frosted-door-the-scandalous

Italy’s ‘Child Queens,’ Sealed in Stone

 Across northern Italy, some of the oldest stones in the region hold secrets from a distant past, where children were interred with reverence and ceremony.

The path through the woods above Roppolo is carpeted in copper leaves, and the winter light falls thin through the bare chestnuts.

The Expat Paradox: Finding Freedom in Italy's Coldest Welcome

 Twenty-six kilometers separate Biella from Ivrea, but they might as well be centuries apart.

I’ve already told you about Ivrea—the city that dreamed outward, that built its utopia around Olivetti’s vision, that wanted the world to see what it had created. Biella chose differently. When the textile industry that defined it for generations disappeared, Biella didn’t dream of the future. It turned inward.

There was once a sign at the city entrance—or maybe it’s a legend that captures the truth better than facts ever could—that read something like: “Welcome to Biella—but no one’s expecting you.” In 2018, statistics confirmed what the sign suggested: Biella was officially Italy’s least attractive city, the place no one wanted to move to.

And yet.

I fell in love with Biella the moment I arrived, eight years ago, not despite its coldness, but because of what that coldness actually meant.

One day, walking into town from where I live just outside the city, I dropped my shirt—an expensive one I loved. 

Continue reading https://exegi.substack.com/p/the-expat-paradox-finding-freedom

The Hierarchy of Mountain Gods

Walk into any landscape that's bigger and more powerful than you are—any mountain, any ocean, any desert, any forest dark enough to remind you that you're not actually in control—and boots up.