CHAPTER 1

The grumbling of a distant thunder interrupted my thoughts. I paused by the stone wall before climbing over and observed the sky. I thought I heard a strange sound, a prolonged whining that followed the sinister noise that faded into the silence of the countryside. It had been perhaps the fruit of my anxiety or a premonition that should have convinced me to postpone the search to a more favourable time. I wanted to go back, but a strange feeling and the refusal to surrender to the fear that had risen suddenly at the sound of the thunder, increased my audacity. I jumped over the wall and kept on walking on the wet grass of the country that in winter picks up the dampness of the night to give it back to the air, when the sun warms it up again.
I had started my wandering on the hills and the caves that surround Ianuneti without a specific destination; I was searching for the solution to a mystery that I hoped to find at the end of my physical exhaustion. I had chosen casually a place in the country as a point of departure and from there I would go on a straight line, ignoring the difficulties that I would face during the descents and the climbing of the ravines. That day the anxiety made me more reckless, a strange feeling forced me to follow a more impervious path. Sometimes we perceive a discomfort that we would like to attribute to things happening around us or as the result of a physical illness, but this feeling can also come from an existential restlessness or, as in my particular case, from an unconscious call that directs our actions toward a mysterious finality.
Every time I got those feelings I felt my head empty and I would lose contact with reality to enter a surreal world, where the physical laws were overturned. The gravity would disappear and I would get the sensation that I could fly. But the moment had not come yet and the impulse turned instead into a wait. When the anxiety became unbearable, I went to

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the hill that overlooks the town, I paused on the summit, took a big breath to free myself from the weight that gripped my chest and I meditated a few minutes. That brief pause had become a rite that allowed me to decrease the tension. I observed the hills lost in the light mist of the distance; to the east the sea was a thin blue stripe. The grey lines of the canyons drew some abstract forms; they departed from the level of the land and then sank in deep gorges, signs of the apocalyptic events that had modelled the land. The fences, made of stones, were instead geometric drawings of squares, rectangles, uneven shapes; they were properties limits and assured the right to cultivate the land contained therein. Those walls seemed to be witnesses to the labour of men that drew, with their sweat, nourishment from the arid land, covered mostly by rocks: the earth from which they had been made.
Two hundred meters farther, on the right, there was a country road, wide enough to let my small car through, whose bottom scraped at times the rocks strewn all along. At the end there was an iron gate. I parked the car, picked up the stick hidden behind the stonewall that held the gate and ventured in what had to be my walk-revelation. The stick was well balanced and smooth, drawn from an olive branch, almost a meter and a half long; it looked like a javelin. I used it during the descents and the steep slopes, but it had also the purpose of a weapon and made me feel confident. This was another sign of the insecurity that was creeping into my thoughts; in reality, there was no need to protect myself, the danger was only a feeling of precariousness that was increasing with time.
The reasons that pushed me to undertake those excursions, in good or bad weather, are very important for my story and I think it’s necessary to mention them for a reflection that could give some logic and likelihood to what I am about to describe: an extraordinary story indeed, that could seem perhaps surreal, but that is instead true.

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An eerie feeling tormented me after the announcement of George’s illness and I wanted to find a rational explanation to the strange similarity I noticed in the lives of people and things.
My anguish started the day I had met him, a retired teacher of Latin and Greek. We were sitting by chance, or destiny, in contiguous places during a concert of classical music. We exchanged some words during the intermission and his way of talking, the gesture, the considerations he was making and what I perceived through my unusual sensitivity, reminded me of Giovanni, a dear friend of mine who had died the year before, when his melanoma had become brain cancer. At the end, without paying attention, I called him Giovanni and he corrected me smiling.
Giovanni had fought his last battle in a hospital and I had followed the progress of his illness with increasing apprehension and pain, aware of the unavoidable end; he was my best friend. Before dying he had asked me to finish the book he was writing, as if to leave a sign to testify his life experience. He had guarded jealously all the pictures taken during the Second World War. It struck me the way he had illustrated an oasis of peace, in contrast with what was happening around. They narrated a period of his youth in a simple but very expressive way, with the lights and shades of the photos, all in black and white. The images conveyed the desolation of the war he had been through, prisoner of the SS for a full year, and the desire of freedom he achieved climbing the mountains with his friend Rosa. They were both daring mountain climbers at a time when the equipment was rather rudimentary. Later he had travelled extensively, driven by an unquenchable thirst to discover new places and different civilizations, perhaps in search of a land that ignored war.
I had written some comments under each photo and he had liked the simplicity of the explanations. To complete his story he wanted to take some pictures of the Nazi’s concentration

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camps he had planned to visit. Instead death had interrupted his work, at least until… George crossed my path.
A few weeks after the concert I saw George again, waiting for the bus. I waved and invited him into the car. He was holding some plastic bags as if they were a treasure. And such they were indeed, at least for me. He had just returned from a trip to Germany and Poland, where he had visited the concentration camps. He had developed the photos and showed them to me. I was amazed: they were all in black and white! I told him about the book and I asked if I could use some of his photos to finish it and thus fulfil my friend’s desire.
Our friendship started with the peculiarity of déjà vu. More I came to know him, more I became aware of the strange connection he had with Giovanni. He owned a country house 32 Km from my house, the exact distance from the one Giovanni had, but in the opposite direction. He had travelled to places where Giovanni had been, cooked similar meals, was an enthusiastic photographer and he cultivated in the small garden of his country house the same vegetables and the same flowers. He had the same deep voice; perhaps this was just an impression.
I was startled when he told me of the surgery he had had a few years before, for a cancer of the skin. He had been operated in ’97; I didn’t dare to ask him the date, I was afraid he would tell me on October the 10th, like Giovanni!.
Those were odd occurrences and I couldn’t shun the thought of their resemblance and the return of the memories reopened the wound that the departing of my old friend had left.
One day he told me that he was having some difficulties in pronouncing some words, he felt in his head a weight that bothered him and was scheduled to pass a scan in mid February. I had listened to him with apprehension. His life was woven in a striking similarity to Giovanni's life. I felt again a knot in the throat.

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Was it possible that George had a brain tumour? Would he die like Giovanni? Were they, perhaps, two parts of the same being or living parallel lives? And, furthermore, is there a law according to which what one starts must be completed in one way or another? Was the hidden reason for the pictures he had taken the completion of the book Giovanni couldn't finish?
These and many other thoughts had been bothering me for a few months and I had started my excursions with the desire to find a logical answer to all my questions. I wanted to push myself to the limit of physical endurance, as if, emptied of energy, the body could melt and free the extra-sensorial perceptions.
Another object of consideration was the fact that I had, in the past, some visions in special places, strange trips in distant eras; but I could not divulge these stories for fear of being considered affected by hallucinatory schizophrenia. Now, while I am writing, this fear doesn’t exist anymore, my judgment has become more objective and I can afford to describe the things that I have witnessed without the worry to incur in the denial of the sceptics. During the perception of events from the past I was usually a spectator but, at times, I had taken part in them and it would have been difficult to explain how I was able to communicate with the people I met. Now I have inferred that such communication had happened at the subconscious level, extra sensorial, and therefore there was no need to know the language of those I met. But how can you explain these things to the people who need scientific evidence?
During the whole month of January grey clouds had almost always stained the sky and sometimes I got soaking wet, when a sudden downpour caught me far from the gate. For this reason I kept in the car a towel, a pair of jeans and a shirt. That fateful day the clouds were low, almost black, and threatened a storm. Unconcerned by the wind and the sudden cold that had replaced the warmth of the previous day, I was walking on the sod just removed by the plough, inhaling the

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smell of the soil. I jumped a wall, on which some brambles were creeping, and went towards the first canyon, trying to avoid the paths that I had already crossed, despite the fact that I could lose the orientation. I reached the bottom, where the dampness kept the soil wet and muddy. I observed my imprints clearly drawn on the surface; someone would perhaps find them before they would disappear forever. I thought that those footprints were a little of me, the trace I left to witness an important moment of my search.
Where the bottom of the canyon widened and the light could reach the opening, an enormous barrier of brambles prevented me from continuing in a straight direction. I could bypass only on the sides and go up the cliffs either on the right or on the left. I tried to identify a sign that would allow me to choose the direction: I listened carefully to the noise of the wind shaking the tops of the trees, the grumbling of the distant thunders, the heartbeat, my breath. I didn’t find any help. I decided to go to the right, convinced to find some indication in there. And so it was, to my great surprise and fear. While I was near the top of the cliff, in sight of an almost inaccessible rock deprived of vegetation, I noticed the head of a wolf sticking out. He was threatening with his hair bristly and dark. I marvelled at the possibility that there could be some wolves in those regions, but then the name of the place made reference to those animals. Or was that again a vision of the past? I picked up a stone and threw it with all my strength towards the animal, hoping to dissolve its consistency. A growl or a fierce howling answered my provocation and three other heads appeared at his side. I felt less fearful by gripping the stick, my weapon. I gathered another stone and threw it at them waving the stick, as if this would have been able to break the spell. A series of fiercer growls answered the new attempt. The dog or wolf that seemed to lead the pack, threateningly showed me the sharp teeth and leaned out as if looking for a way to reach me. I didn’t have any other choice

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but to walk down the path from where I had come and decided to climb instead the opposite slope.
When I reached a terrace, half way to the top, I paused to rest a little. From there, I could see the charred trunks of some trees that had burnt a few years before, during a violent fire that had destroyed a great portion of the vegetation of the already poor land. They looked like some twisted ghosts. Those on the highest and distant hills looked like threatening human shapes. One in particular attracted my attention: it had a blackened stump. Puzzled, I followed the direction it was pointing at. I guessed the presence of another canyon and then I saw a distant and higher hill. Behind its horizon the glare of a halo was projected on the grey sky as if a fire would be burning at the bottom of the valley. Was it an invitation? A call? An illusion or the fruit of my desire? The cave had to be deeper than the others and to reach the bottom it would take a good half hour. I set out in that direction sure that there I would find the answers to my questions.
While I was trying to jump over a wall, the branch of a bramble stuck its sharp thorns to my pants, as if to prevent me from going. I freed myself scratching my hands, but instead of listening to the suggestion, as I would have done in other occasions, I continued in a quicker pace and arrived at the edge of the other hillside. A barbed wire, two meters from the edge, was stretched over some wooden poles to prevent the animals from falling into the ravine.
With great care and the help of the stick, I crossed the barrier and reached the edge. From there I could see, at the bottom, a large field of grass and several oaks lining the opposite wall. Some had lost the leaves and the branches to the fire, others had been spared. Right in the middle of the lawn there was an enormous and solitary tree, undamaged. The fire had not scarred it. While I was observing it, overwhelmed by its stately appearance, a strange thought crossed my mind and made me curious and euphoric: that oak was a copy of the

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one I had seen in the Sherwood Forest, in England! The Major Oak! I didn’t have any doubt, she had impressed me when I had seen her for the first time and was hypnotizing me now. The base seemed clinging to the soil with roots as big as elephant’s legs; the trunk, or perhaps several trunks, were rising fused at the roots and separated slightly higher in three gigantic branches that ran parallel to the ground and then up, to become vertical and hold the thick and green cap of leaves. I felt the same anxiety I had experienced when I had approached the oak in the Sherwood Forest, and the desire to find the same emotion I had experienced at the touch of its bark, accelerated my heartbeat. I examined the cliff on which I was standing and looked for a path or a way that would allow me to go down and reach the oak. That tree was waiting for me. Did she attract me from a distance, the way black holes in space draw all the objects falling under their force field?
The desire to touch the leaves, the trunk and the branches was stronger than the fear of falling; my will had become prisoner of the magnetism stemming from the tree. I grabbed a root sticking out from the rock and with great caution I started the descent, uncaring of the pain I felt in my hands, wounded by the sharp stones and the brambles to which I clung daringly. I had the feeling of being suspended in the air, of being able to fly. With my foot I was searching for a hole in the rock, a small shrub, a protrusion; my bleeding hands were gripping the wall. Slowly I was climbing down the vertical slope.
The grumbling of a thunder, echoed by the walls of the canyons, woke me up from the numbness I had fallen into. Suddenly I wondered what I was doing on that cliff, perched like a daredevil in a precarious position, over the chasm. I understood that the sensation of lightness I was feeling had its origin in the euphoria of the discovery, I would not have been able to defy gravity and fly like a bird. I felt fearful, but there was no other choice, I wouldn’t have been able to regain the

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summit. A panic attack was imminent and to divert my attention, I looked back at the oak. She appeared even more majestic: the leaves stirred by a light wind that was now carrying some rain droplets, the enormous trunk with deep grooves, wounds caused by lightning, the hollow base, the branches wide and strong. She was indeed waiting for me!
After a seemingly endless time, I finally reached the bottom. My hair was wet, the rain had started to fall, but the inconvenience was of no importance and couldn’t discourage me any more: before my very eyes there was the sacred oak of the Druids, perhaps a copy of the famous one. Was it possible that there were two of them, complementary? In a parallel existence, like Giovanni and George? Was it an invention of my fertile imagination? A vision of the past?
The thunders were now closer and more threatening, the rain started to fall with more violence. Indifferent to the danger that I should have foreseen, I started to race towards the tree and, while I was running, I heard someone shouting my name. I reached my fateful destination panting. The rain had become a downpour and was hiding the objects around and the cliff I had just climbed down. I tried to find out who had called me, but the curtain of water was too opaque.
Sheltered by the big green roof, I felt protected, and when I leaned on the trunk, I became conscious of a strange energy that was spreading to my whole body. I sensed that I was getting ready for an imminent transformation: I became part of the oak and she part of me. I looked at the branches stretching out from the trunk and then rising towards the clouds. Higher up I noticed some mistletoe growing on a branch. The omen was too clear now: the mistletoe sacred to the Druids! The growth the priests looked for their rites on the oaks, believed to hold the souls of the dead. They had also a special golden sickle to cut it. The rites are essential elements in a cult, they hold the followers to the belief and the more they are mysterious and magic, the more they fascinate their minds. I

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felt that I also had the need for that rite and decided to pick it up; it would certainly suggest the answers to my questions, the way it had done with the Druids. But how could I reach it? It was too high and I didn’t have the capability nor the agility to climb up the trunk. A stick would have allowed me to get it, but with so much rain where could I find one long enough? And where was mine? I had lost it during the descent.
The downpour turned into a storm. The thunders exploded now immediately after the lightning and deafened me with their loud sound. Streaks of white light seemed to split the clouds and drew cracks on the grey, while the rain continued to fall heavily.
I took refuge in the hollow trunk, it could hardly contain my body, and I felt protected from the sudden fury that was gripping the whole space around the oak. It was as if the rage of nature had chosen the oak and me. That was a premonition or the prelude to my trip, and even with my unusual extra-sensorial ability, I couldn’t understand the events that had troubled my mind: the visions of the past, Giovanni and George, the two oaks, the sudden fury of the nature.
I didn’t fear the storms, thunders and lightings have always fascinated me, now however I had the impression that something was about to happen; I perceived an imminent danger. I leaned from my hideaway to look again at the mistletoe that, oddly, seemed to be dry. I exited my shelter and tried to catch a branch that, because of the wet leaves and the strong wind, was waving up and down. I was aware of the danger associated with the trees during the storms, but I couldn’t care less and started to jump, trying to grab it, until I succeeded. I can’t explain where I found the necessary strength to hoist me up, or how much time it took, the only thing I clearly remember is the attraction that the mistletoe had exerted on my thoughts and on my will. Soaking wet, I was perched on the branch, glued to it and unable to move. In between the thunders, in the short moments of silence, I still

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heard the voice calling out my name, muffled by the roar of the rain. Perhaps it was instead the wind howling strong through the leaves; who could be there in such weather and in that far away place? I started to crawl slowly towards the trunk and I felt again the emotion I had in Sherwood: the becoming part of the oak, like the leaves, the branches and the trunk. A lightning closer than the other ones, shined on the wet leaves and the thunder that burst almost simultaneously, made me think of an enormous cannon exploding a few feet away. Right after, in the silence that follows the deafening noises, I heard the voice shouting words that hardly reached me and of which I couldn’t grab the sense. Was my subconscious warning me of the imminent danger? Or the last premonitions of the reason that wanted to prevent me to begin the voyage? Ignoring the call and its reason, I kept on crawling until I got close to the trunk; I stood up on the branch and extended the arm to grab the mistletoe.
In that precise instant, when I touched it, the transformation took place: a lightning struck us with all its violent force.
At first I was immobile and amazed, an enormous energy went through my body and glued me to the trunk, then I saw myself exploding like the fireworks when, reaching their apogee, open in the air like an umbrella, with streaks of fire and coloured dots. I don’t know if I passed out, if I caught fire, if my body disintegrated; I didn’t see the tunnel of light that some people, close to death, experience. I felt instead that the result of all the energy that had hit me was the annihilation of the law of gravity. I was flying without the body, but with the process of thoughts enhanced. I could perceive everything without the nervous mechanisms: I was escaping the spell of the oak, I crossed the atmosphere, reached the sidereal space and from there I observed the earth become a blue ball, the sun disappear, the galaxy melt.
I was frightened, but since I didn’t feel my heart, I cannot say that its pulsation had increased. It became by now clear that

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what I was doing in the previous days was a kind of preparation for the trip that I had to undertake after my bodily disintegration. I can't even say if this happened in a fraction of a second or in a long period, because time also seemed nonexistent.
To avoid fossilizing my thoughts in that colourless wake, I surrendered to the feelings of the moment, without resistance, as I used to do during my terrestrial life in the places of the visions, and I tried to listen to the messages that I gathered from my new surroundings.
I couldn’t see what was happening around me, my eyes didn’t exist anymore, but I could perceive everything and imagine the lights, the forms and the colours.
A mysterious force attracted us towards one point and our speed was increasing with the flight, while travelling on a spiral course, like the water in a sink. I have used the plural because I had become aware of the presence of other conscious beings, not two, one hundred nor a thousand, but in endless number.
There was not curiosity in me, nor fear, only the total letting go to what seemed to be a natural law. I thought about the migration of the animals, the mysterious power that drives them towards a known place, the yearning for the universe they had lost when they became unique, upon birth. This I can say with certainty, now that I have transcended the space and the time during the trip.
I didn’t hear any noise. How could I if my ears didn’t exist anymore? I had however, the impression that there was a vibration, a regular pulsation and a rhythm that gave meaning to my flight and my thoughts. I wondered if the other particles of energy felt the same sensation, but at that time I wasn’t interested in communicating with them, nor would I even know how to do it.
The speed was increasing constantly; the exhilarating run intoxicated all my thoughts. I became aware of being directed

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towards a point that I thought was an enormous black hole that swallowed all the energies, even the light. I realized after that it was indeed a single point. The anxiety that I still carried in my thoughts, made me wonder how we could fit, all of us, in that microscopic point. I was still reasoning with the material principles that connect space to volume and time. Only that then, I wasn’t aware that time had disappeared and all the physical laws that had forced me into a body, with a weight and a limited life span, didn’t exist anymore. I tried to use the notion that I had of time even if this would oblige me to calculate it in millions of years, but I didn’t have any reference point: where did I start? When?
The oak was only a connection to a reality by now nonexistent.

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