You can write the phone number of that girl you like so much on it.
You can draw the new layout of your living room or freeze, with watercolors, the spring tones of leaves on trees.
You can fold it to make a 2- or 3D model, a sculpture, an airplane to launch froma window.
You can entrust it with your memories, your preoccupations and wishes or your most bizarre reveries: it will accept them with friendly camaraderie.
You can read the history of your people - which is also your history - on it.
You can blow your nose, dry your sweat, clean your pudendum, wipe your hands with it after changing a flat tire.
You can fold it in four and fix it under a wobbly table leg or put your signature on it to get married, underwrite a home mortgage, accept a registered letter with your heart beating fast.
You can print your vacation pictures on it: unique and exactly the same as last year's ifit weren't for that white hair.
You can calculate your financial liquidity, small or large though it may be, on it.
You can read the day's news on it or write a protest sign for tomorrow's demonstration.
You can wrap a ham sandwich in it for your lunch break and drink a cup of water from it, crumbling up the cup afterwards.
If we think about it, paper has lots of apps: the material it is made of and the shapes it can assume make a unique and vital substance, every time.
Walter Tamarri