One message leading to another

You just phoned and immediately I knew it was an unexpected call from you, speaking from your flat in in the Via Paolo Sarpi. (Two days after the election results and Berlusconi’s comeback.) The speed with which we identify a familiar voice coming out of the blue, is comforting, but also somewhat mysterious. Because the measures, the units, we use in calculating the clear distinction that exists between one voice and another, are unformulated and nameless. They don’t have a code. These days more and more is encoded. So I wonder whether there aren’t other measures, equally uncoded yet precise, with which we calculate other givens. For example, the amount of circumstantial freedom existing in a given situation, its extent and its strict limits. Prisoners become experts about this. They develop a particular sensitivity towards liberty, not as a principle, but as a granular substance. They spot almost immediately, fragments of liberty whenever they occur. *