THE GOLDEN AGE OF SHOTGUNS

Weapons of innocence

It is not only the adult who survives and hunts, but also the child.

Would the child then have known the difference between the symbol and the real weapon that kills? Would it have been plausible to leap on its own, into another orbit of consciousness, limiting and containing its universe of aggression before the very last consequences of the real had been realized? Who is this child, after all?

Innocent is the one who has not crossed the threshold and has no idea what lurks in the frozen darkness. But the child fights for his toys, defends himself and is knocked down, builds his own formidable weapons with which he learns, perhaps, to blackmail adults, to get what he wants or to protect himself, to build alliances of children against children. It is not only the adult who survives and hunts, but also the child.

Aggression, before it becomes as such, is melted like the salinity of blood, like any other parameter that maintains homeostatic equilibrium. The first tuberman loaded with the cornet of the dictating sheet precisely marks the beginning of the end of innocence. In the process of this child's introspection, each tube added, each pattern copied, each death game played, describes the transforming path of innocence towards something else.

But beware! The sun has not completely perished, its iridescence still lights up the sky, and innocence, in increasingly pastel hues, still belongs! The sun remained suspended, hanging undecidedly on the horizon line. And the adult plays with the game superimposed on the game of the child who continues endlessly to build his dream weapons.

The craft and art of making weapons, true cartilages and joints of growth of humanity, must be found mirrored in the protected heart of every man. Or at least his. What a perspective opens up: the old tubermane maker retired to his room and his craft, communicating with the world only through the alphabet of the weapons of his childhood, saved from an uncertain and unworn war! And I, the one who now looks at the weapons resting in the rack, wonder how humanity is born from this long journey.

He, for now, is living his fantasy, and the space of uncertainty of the still-not-quite-lost innocence, perhaps has the prophylactic effect at least against the disease of innocence used as a weapon."