Aldo Fifth Lazzari, “The history of man through food”

The passage of time is inexorable, tic tac tic tac tic tac ... it is entirely up to us to decide the intensity of how we want to live it.

As for me I have lived the last three years as if I had lived ten o'clock, and the previous ten, as if I had lived three. Maybe because I feel the need to recover everything that I have not lived, o forse, more simply, because now I try to live all I can.

And so continuous, on a path that I did not yet entirely clear… meeting people, sometimes right and sometimes wrong, I follow the advice, but mostly I follow my instinct. So it was, when, Following a suggestion, I met Aldo Fifth Lazzari.

A man is not easy, I knew from our first phone conversation. A river in flood that overwhelmed me with tales of his many life experiences, a busy life with hard stances and frequent changes of direction.

A few months ago, after a long illness, he left his wife for ever, Mary Rose Stems Lazzari, the companion of a lifetime.

I went to see, and, in the privacy of his home, among the many memories, between his photos scattered everywhere and its a thousand books, I spent a whole afternoon to listen, until, evening came, together we prepared dinner.  

An unusual encounter, on which I had to reflect, so take a sense to write.

Aldo Fifth Lazzari was born in Sabina. During the war he was sent by his family to study on Lake Maggiore. Disappointed, after I attend a drama school, is oriented toward aviation, but even here his character clashes with the military bureaucracy in the short, and decides to resign.

In the late 50s he approached the world food and agriculture. Fascinated by history, and the evolution of human food and, devote much of his life to the study, until you reach the publication of his most important work: “The History of Man through food”.

A life lived by traveling, exploring and studying the power of the various populations. An intense life, full of stories that I will not go over to tell, because too many things done by Aldo during his lifetime.

That night I will stay in the memory that I was a man “drunk on life”, who lived intensely, and who now lives among his books and his memories.

When I asked him why not go and live in the countryside, he almost did not listen, his world is there, in the house.

If I think about what I have left of this meeting, is that the more I understand the mechanisms by which the man makes the world, and more nature and its rhythms appeal to me.