york
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We only have one life. Or at least, we are conscious of living only one life at a time.We do not know whether we have been here before. We do not know how many times we have returned, nor how many times we may return again. What we do know is that we are alive…
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Abbiamo una sola vita. O perlomeno, siamo coscienti di viverne una sola alla volta.Non sappiamo se siamo già stati qui prima. Non sappiamo quante volte siamo tornati, né quante volte torneremo ancora. Quello che sappiamo è che siamo vivi adesso, e che questa è l’unica esistenza di cui abbiamo memoria.Eppure, a volte, accade qualcosa di…
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I’ve always had a problem with myself, and with everything around me. I can never stop wondering how things might have turned out if they had taken a different direction from the one they actually did. To be clear, it’s not like I spend every day, every hour, imagining all the different ways my life,…
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Io ho sempre avuto un problema con me stessa e con tutto quello che mi gira intorno. E cioè che non riesco mai a fare a meno di pensare a come sarebbero andate le cose se avessero preso una piega diversa da quella attuale, da quella reale. Sia ben chiaro, non è che sto tutti…
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There is a figure that keeps resurfacing in books, discussions, astrology, and modern reinterpretations of history. Her name is Lilith, and she seems to change face every time someone tells her story. Now… a clarification is necessary right away, because over these thousands of years an incredible number of legends have been built around Lilith.…
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E se vi dicessi che nel Medioevo si drogavano, voi come la prendereste?Eh, era un’epoca dura quella… austera… tanto che forse qualcuno aveva bisogno di sballarsi… o forse no. Forse le droghe, così come le intendiamo noi, non servivano di certo a sballare… ma proviamo a fare un passo alla volta. Le droghe esistevano, eccome…
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You probably think that swearing is a modern invention. That profanity belongs to us, the enlightened, irreverent present, and that in the Middle Ages, for instance, not only was it impossible, but it was actually quite likely that God would strike you down from the sky and set you on fire. Well, no. In the…
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When the name Heloise is spoken, collective memory almost automatically turns to another figure: Pierre Abélard. Their love story, overwhelming, scandalous, tragic, has, over time, become one of the founding myths of Western romantic imagination. Yet to stop there is to betray precisely what makes Heloise an exceptional figure. For Heloise is not merely the…
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Objects, as we know, travel through time. And sometimes monuments or chronicles are not needed: a single line of ink, a signature, a motto slipped into the margin of a book is enough to bring back to the surface, after five centuries, a truth of identity. In the first part (here), we followed the most…
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When we think of Christmas, we most often think of the tree, Santa Claus, lights, and huge family tables filled with laughter and arguments (yes, that happens too, let’s admit it peacefully!). But in the Middle Ages, how was Christmas experienced? First of all, Christmas festivities did not begin on December 8 as they do…
Beyond Death 