THE PARADE  - In the little village of Civita Castellana, less than 30 miles from Rome the carnival celebrations possess to me a unique flavor, a recipe that wildly stirs my inner ruminations. This masquerade has a power over the shattering daily reality, something that can be experienced precisely within this naive, genuine environment and in no other parade I've been to. I witnessed to a carefully prepared carnival with the dances, the wagons and all the rest, for almost no public. In the audience deserted streets, the village characters were dancing, drinking, and men camouflaging mostly in women dresses. Italian saudade, sense of open, random possibilities, plus time cancellation it all converges in emotionally charged visions of people, mutual gazes, environment, situations, landscapes. It can sound trivial, but putting the masks is, in that time and place, the key to open a often locked door and to air out some pawing aspects of a multifaceted personality, scraping out what are the true rituals of the habitual. People flocking the streets for the parade were no more ordinary people. Their faces were shaped by this final sense of freedom, a pagan catharsis of eventually being somebody else, someone you care a lot for and have always known very well.