Culture. Eat it
4 June 2018
He was fine on his leaf:
he ate it, went down,
did a walk and then returned.He lacked nothing.
One day
while he was walking,
the caterpillar found himself
suddenly lifted from the ground,
suspended to a twig.
A sudden and unexpected thing just like the intuition that Antonella Capetti, author of the illustrated book How beautiful!, received as a gift. She was riding a bike in the countryside with a friend when, in front of the manifest marvel experienced by the latter for a caterpillar, she wondered about the meaning of the words How beautiful! for each of us.
This is where our story of beauty begins.
One morning a strange beast with a strange odorbursts into the life of the little caterpillar. He talks to him three simple words How beautiful you are and nothing will be as before.
Nobody had ever told him.
Who knows what it meant.
Absurd for us readers that he is who wonders, he who lives in the enchanting nature of fantastic purple and orange shades, the work of english illustrator Melissa Castrillon. Yet the question What does it mean beautiful? torments him; he interrogates the bear, the crow, the squirrels, the rat, the mole, the deer but he doesn’t find the answer he seeks.
Everyone seems to have a different opinion: beauty can be useful, comfortable, warm, fun, shiny … and then? Those simple words have moved deep within our caterpillar, which he isn’t happy with the answers of his friends in the woods and continues in his search.
In the meantime the night had come
while the darkness enveloped slowly
everything.
There is a moment in which words seem not to be enough and the heart takes over.
Everyone exclaimed in unison How beautiful!, who knows what they have seen.
Reading time
a beautiful starry night
Ph. Sara Cartelli
© The Eat Culture
Photos: Sara Cartelli
Author
Bio:
She is an art historian, optimistic and empathic by nature. She imagines a world where sow kindness enjoying the little things. She's in love with stories since she was a child, for the Eat Culture she eats books and arts. Per aspera ad astra says the only tattoo on her skin. It reminds her that the road that leads to her dreams is not always easy but that she never gives up.
You may also like
the book on the nightstand
Vincent Van Love. A story in pictures of Vincent’s inner world
by Ramona Lucarelli
