On Thursday 21 December, at 6 p.m., in the Sala Botti of Viticoltori Ponte in via Giuseppe Verdi 50 in Ponte di Piave, the President of the Veneto Region, Luca Zaia, will present to the public (admission free subject to availability) his book “Fa’ presto, vai piano. La vita è un viaggio passo a passo’ (Marsilio publishers). Journalist Domenico Basso will dialogue with the author.
In this third literary endeavour, Zaia retraces his memories of his youth when, in the mid-1980s, he was an 18-year-old entering life without ever having set foot outside the province. Strong in his boyhood dreams, amidst the certainties of an existence marked by the rhythms of nature and the unknowns of a world yet to be discovered, he will find himself facing a reality far more complex than that of the town from which he started out. With the distance of maturity and the light-hearted style of adventure stories, he recalls the journey in which he first took a conscious look at himself and at life, to deliver to young people convictions and values that still guide him today. “The experiences we face in life do not just leave us with memories: they are the very essence of each of our journeys. By retracing the places of that adventure stage by stage, he compares the possibilities of today with the difficulties of yesterday, the hopes of a generation and the promises of history, between intuitions and desires, expectations and out-of-sight. Moving through the roads of Europe on board a 2CV, he recounts the amazement in the “discovery” of the other, the experience of frontiers, both physical and psychological, the truth of a “promised land”, Spain, suspended between nostalgia and progress, the bewilderment in front of the extreme limit, the melancholy of detachment and the freedom of memory that remains, but adapting to age and experience. The time of the journey dilates and in the succession of encounters and events, the thoughts and considerations of those days alternate with images of landscapes and cities, in a profound reflection on how one becomes an adult, on the passion for ideas and for life.
Sometimes the future is a more distant present. A story about responsibility and the ability to open up to the world with wonder, the passion of ideas and respect for traditions, the most important lessons learnt from life. A journey (metaphorical and otherwise) across Europe and back in time, an initiation into adulthood, the emergence of a conscience, an invitation to believe in oneself and in tomorrow.
