Foreword
“Who can forget those moments when something that seems inanimate turns out to be vitally, even dangerously alive? As, for example, when an arabesque in the pattern of a carpet is revealed to be a dog’s tail, which, if stepped upon, could lead to a nipped ankle? Or when we reach for an innocent-looking vine and find it to be a worm or a snake? When a harmlessly drifting log turns out to be a crocodile?”
(Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable)
“ …you don’t know how many witches they burned and how many women ended up filling psychiatric asylums before they realized it was a severe autoimmune thyroid disease”.
(With these words, a doctor from the Roman suburbs introduced me, for the first time, to the disease I’m suffering from.)

