Hugging bricks in Pavia

I found a comment from my dear and deeply missed friend Paolo Serra this morning.
Paolo was informing me how our friends back in Pavia were missing me, and how the people working at the ice-cream shop kept asking about me since an abrupt and deep fall in their sales.

I miss all these people, and places, so much.
I miss Piazza della Vittoria, the main square and gathering place in Pavia, I miss the Chiesa di Santa Maria del Carmine where, under a beautifully starred sky, I first kissed a beautiful lady whose wit and creativity both in and off the bed never fails to surprise me. Most of all I miss my solitary walks on sunday early mornings, when the town is desert, and you only come across rare old ladies walking up the narrow medieval alleys to Mass.

It would be along one of those alleys that I would celebrate a ritual I am very fond of: after glimpsing towards the two ends, making sure nobody would come along, I would lean against one of the medieval houses, stuck my face and chest on the wall and, arms wide spread, hug the layers of red bricks. Bricks smelling of mold - attentively layered one by one by some skillful albeit under-paid people's hand - made out of ground, wood, water and fire. Paolo would be the only person allowed to witness my ritual, otherwise I would make sure I was alone on the street lest I be carried away to the 'San Matteo', the local and well reputed hospital hosting, among the others, a Psychiatric Ward.
In Pavia we would 'go for buildings' with Paolo. He has a deep love for constructions and materials and we would always be happy to stare at houses and buildings in Pavia. He would explain to me how shapes follow from structures and how structures follow from living and trading needs, technical and legal constraints, all of these incessantly developing along the history of a community. He was the one who introduced me to the reading of Adolf Loos, an architect who spent his professional life warning people about the importance of cultural identity and genuine human needs which should always serve as guides for the designer.

My favorite question I would ask Paolo was: why iron Vespas age better then plastic ones? How come their beauty ages better; how come wood ages better than concrete, for example. How come handcrafts age better than industrially made objects? I have some hints that it may all due to the role of chaos, chance. Maybe fractals and Fourier transforms are involved too. But I have always sucked at Maths, plus such concepts are in fashion among the very 'sucking-at-Maths' people and therefore I would stop here.