Photographs from the album of happiness 22

This article is published in number 10 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until March 16, 2021

Six months ago, in the midst of the second lockdown in Israel, the editor of Vanity Fair invited me to propose a topic for the new column. I sent him several proposals, including a photo album of happiness. In the days that passed until his reply arrived, I prayed to myself that he would choose another one, all but that one. Maybe it sounds good, I thought, but I wouldn’t be able to carry it on.

And not just me. Happiness is not good for us storytellers. Blur conflicts. And it takes away the sharpness of the characters. Calm your fears. And put your passions to sleep.
My starting point in writing has always been hunger. Ache. Restlessness.
And here in recent months I found myself, once a week, looking for moments of joy and satisfaction from which to start a story. To rummage through the memory. To find old diaries in the attic. To ask the people I was talking to to tell me about a happy moment they had recently. And all this while a deadly virus rages out there, of which the parents of some of my friends are dead. We could not even go to console them, it is forbidden by security measures. While the economy collapses and most of the artists I know find themselves out of work. While all my normal sources of happiness – a heartfelt chat with a friend, an evening at a rock concert, when the rhythm of the bass makes the floor vibrate under your feet, a run in the public gardens of Porta Venezia in Milan – they are inaccessible. And who knows for how long.

*

I imagined you, readers and readers, as I wrote.
I had to imagine you, because you are in another country. And the skies are closed. And there is no hope that she will accidentally meet you at the train station and tell me what you think about last week’s column.
I imagined that you too, like me, in these dark days needed a reminder that life can also give us moments of happiness.
I imagined you reading my photographs of happiness, then moving on to mentally leaf through your personal album. Remembering something. Someone. Maybe in the throes of nostalgia. Maybe with an inner smile.
I figured that you, like me, know it’s more complicated. That Lao Tzu was right when, five thousand years ago, he wrote in the Book of the Tao: “Happiness is brought by sadness, pain dwells under the wing of happiness.”

*

Here it is still winter. But the first flowers are already opening in the meadow between the buildings.
I received my second dose of the coronavirus vaccine yesterday. Around me, many people are already vaccinated. The number of infections is decreasing. Very slowly, but it is dropping. We are afraid to say too soon “it’s over, it’s over now.” We keep it tight inside.
But soon, very soon now, it will explode out there. Like a spring.

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(Translation by Raffaella Scardi)

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