The south facing wall of an old farmhouse along the Ligurian coast was two bricks thick and hundreds high. The farm was left behind, and the walls crumbled.
A broken brick from the wall was tossed into the sea by a boy whose curiosity was only to see if he could hit a floating seagull. He could not.
The brick sank to the shallows of the shore and joined the rolling and swaying movement. For twenty years it tumbled and its edges were ground smooth.
Of all the millions of glossy polished stones underneath his feet on the beach, a man stuck the most ordinary in his pocket, and there it has remained.
It’s a reminder.
His terra-cotta stone was once something else.
Whenever he overthinks something or puts too much emphasis on his own existence, he reaches into his pocket and rubs the red stone between his thumb and fingers. He reminds himself that none of what matters to him now will matter one day.