Once Bukowski was asked: Do you believe in God? He replied: No, I believe only in horses. I do not know why we always realize things when it is too late. Ive also bet on horses for a period. But, differently from Bukowski whom I respect so much, I quit horses and bet on God. Really, I think it is for this faith that I found myself with my back against the wall. Against the wall was the first title I wanted to give to this book. There are a lot of people in the world: tramps, prisoners, all types of emarginated people who are alienated just because, in my opinion, they do not manage to keep pace with a cheering occidental cult of efficiency, to keep up with the rules for which the society, the system did not forgive them. But Christ said: I came to the world for the ill, not for the sane. Thus, is it really true the last will be the first? Maybe, if, as far as I know, a probable God does not consider things the way people do. Anyway, what I have never understood is: there is a baby born from Gypsies and there is another one born from a rich American family. What is the fault of the first one whose destiny is immediately signed? A mystery! So, A Gemstone in the Rock, in its essential message, is an invitation to bet on God as it is the only chance we have in our life. It is also an invitation to prayto pray more often during the day. Even at work. But without putting the entertainment aside: it gives colours to our life. Thats why the title is A Gemstone in the Rock: life is nothing but a precious stone in the rock: you can observe it in its splendour but you cannot take it with your naked hands. As far as the emarginated people are concerned, let us help them bearing in mind that, differently from what the main part of respectable Catholics think, to help them is not at all a walk of pleasure. I say it with a poem: How much pain I get for a kiss to a poor wretch! This book has got a particular: it is like a human being in the course of his life with its high and low moments between faith and total loss of courage.P.S. As far as my poem Now (Faith) is concerned, for a question of a dramaturgic effect I left the sequence of the passion events according to my poetic license.Have a good time reading! Sincerely,Donato Placido This book was born as a synthesis of our writings, our thoughts and vision of the world. I made Donatos acquaintance while he was focused on hypotheses of a staged version of a Pirandellos play. His poetry published and appreciated in Italy, inspired me. I proposed to him being published abroad. I read Donatos material thoroughly and put it in a sequence (I would rather say I had to cut it like a movie: his writings evoke movie-like images). This book owes to me its structure, order and some chapters: trilogy Loneliness of Light I wrote on the basis of apocryphal Gospels found in the Dead Sea in 2004, in particular, Judas and Magdalenes Gospels. However, the dialogue between Judas and Magdalene (staged in 2006 in Moscow at an international festival of directing plays) and Magdalenes monologue are of pure intuition (or, if we prefer so, of artistic invention). Other book parts of which I am the author are: the dialogue Puppets of freedom inspired by Dantons Death by Georg Bchner, extracts from Disillusions (money, power, female love), extracts from Absence and silence (The end of the world, Silence, loneliness and . . .), the whole chapter of Encounter (which is Donatos novel of the same name I put in a nutshell and in blank verse) and my poem on a true love, Till the darkness. In a human life everyone passes from happiness to despair, from the idea of God dissolved in everything to the idea of his absence, one stakes on the material goods accumulation, on power, on love, even on the idea of freedombut then one notices all these concepts are only illusions, just glimpses

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