the bends in the branches

Sometimes, he would be seen standing under the rain, his eyes closed, still as a statue.

"Hey, Lui, What are you doing there?You'll get wet through",they would shout at him. And he would reply: "I'm listening to the rain, but it's hard, because there's so much noise!"

Other times, he would be mesmerised by a twisted tree, and look at it, he would twist his own neck one way and then the other, following the bends in the branches.

"Hey, Lui, do you want to become a plant as well? Is that why you stand rooted there?"

And he: "I'm listening to the leaves, but it's hard, because there's too much noise!"

But the thing Lui did most often and which he most enjoyed was to follow the lines and contours of the distant mountains, of the tree trunks, of the church steeples.

Well, you can imagine how much Lui wanted to go for a stroll in the woods.

excerpted from "Lui and the art of going down to the woods" by Guido Quarzo