I met Mark a long time ago, in the summer of eight or nine years ago thanks to Facebook.
Back then, I was living in Ravenna, Italy, and he was living in one of the cities that stole my heart forever, Modena.
We had many contacts in common due to our passion for motocross and that day, Mark didn’t have to work.
So he asked me if I was up to go for a walk on the beach where I was living.
Why not?
We talk a lot that day, then we decided to go to Modena (about 100 km away from Ravenna) to have dinner because, to be honest, no Italian region can compete with the cuisine of Modena.
If you know about tortellini, tortelloni, lasagna, tagliatelle, lard or prosciutto, to name a few, you know what I am talking about.
Then we said a see you soon once dinner was over, and that’s how a beautiful friendship started.
Mexico City and a heartwarming portrait.
In the past few years, as you know, I have been living in Mexico City.
Far away from my home country and so from my friends.
But even then, I always maintained the contacts because no distance can break a good feeling.
One day, out of the blue, I received an image and a message from Mark, with a beautiful portrait realized from one of the selfies I posted back then.
This one:
I was mesmerized.
It felt like receiving a hug from a friend after a long time without seeing each other.
I saved it and I kept it in my memory for all of these years.
She – Any woman of the world, the book
Fast-forwarding to last year, Mark told me he was working on a coloring book dedicated to celebrating all women and girls around the world, with their peculiarities and personal traits.
And leaving me speechless, Mark included also my name and my portrait.
Just to put the cherry on top of the cake, I will tell you something more. Mark managed to ship the book and having it delivered to my door for Christmas.
The book is called She – Any woman of the world, and it’s distributed by the Italian Charlie Creative Lab international literary agency.
One hundred four pages dedicated to women.
The book, dedicated to Monica, his partner in life and muse in art, includes a final quote from James Brown’s “This is a man’s world”, two pages dedicated to notes, and other two blanks.
Because you never know if you would like to write something on top of coloring the portraits.
You can buy the book on Amazon, and it costs around 5€, so 6 dollars.
I am honestly so proud of Mark.
He came from a long way of growing as a human being and as an artist and seeing someone you care about to succeed in his projects is heartwarming.
The Wandering Cloud 
