Sorry for the delay: the joke comes all too easy, using the title of a famous film by Massimo Troisi, eagerly awaited in its second round after the success of 'Groundhog Day from three'.
A joke to justify references and quotations that cannot fail to exist when dealing with the word delay but which were absent in the first episode.
There have been many different reports from readers and friends on the subject of delay, all correct and pertinent.
So here we are talking about lag again.
The starting point was the Pnrr and Italy's position, late in defining some projects and therefore forced to ask for, and obtain, a one-month extension.
But reasoning, as we have almost always learned to understand with words, immediately took various other paths and in some cases even climbed to philosophical heights (because when one says 'philosophical' or uses the word philosophy it always seems to be exaggerating "Almost as if he were saying a dirty word? It's strange because instead in this podcast we realized that speaking of words, that is, of the means by which we name the world, it is difficult to escape the reference to the history of thought, to the historical changes of culture and how our vision and interpretation of the world has changed and evolved).
But let's not digress.
White Rabbit was the first major absentee from the previous episode.
It is a decisive protagonist of 'Alice in Wonderland', Lewis Carroll's book that has become a classic and transformed into films, plays, cartoons as well as a key reference also for psychologists and interpreters of the deep.
We could say, using an expression actually invented by Hitchcock to define the trigger of his suspense stories, that he is Alice's Mac Guffin.
It is indeed he who draws her attention to her and takes her to wonderland.
He does it with his anxious running and, at least apparently, uselessly busy at the repeated cry of 'It's late, it's late .. 'while constantly looking, obviously not secondary detail, at his pocket watch.
And this is not surprising when you consider that,
The impression is that the White Rabbit needs to slow down and perhaps, without worrying about the time, accept being a little late.
That delay that today, in different situations, we even seek.
'Retard' is the by now familiar expression that indicates slow (or long: in this case it is the same thing) release medicines.
The delay in this case increases the efficiency and effectiveness of the medicine.
Not to mention that delaying condoms are sometimes essential for a satisfying sexual relationship for the couple.
But even the slight delay in arriving for an appointment in someone else's house, such as a dinner, is a convention of good manners because it avoids putting the guest under pressure.
In short, the beauty of the deferred, other than delay.
It is a novel that tells the story of John Franklin (1786-1847), one of the greatest English arctic explorers, who, however, as a child is unable to catch the ball that his companions throw at him.
He always seems uncomfortable, brooding over words, sometimes he doesn't understand.
He finds it hard to express himself.
He is what one would call a misfit.
In reality he is a calm, thoughtful child who will become a self-confident adult in a parable which, as it has been written, 'laughs at the blind convulsion of our current life'.
Of course, the important thing is that the delay isn't too much, that is, that it doesn't become the object of a possible, poignant and fatal regret, as happens instead to Violetta waiting for Alfredo in the third act of 'La Traviata'.