Calvino's crystals

Calvino, in Cosmicomics, writes:

“I dreamed of a world of crystal… Polyhedrons grew as tall as mountains… a valley of beryl opened up into the open, surrounded by ridges of every color, from aquamarine to emerald.”

That passage has always struck me.
Perhaps because, more than any other stone, crystal is the stone I love most: transparent, yet never empty. It allows you to see beyond, but at the same time, if you get closer, it reveals a small universe of imperfections, reflections, inclusions that move like suspended thoughts.
It's a stone that doesn't impose itself: it lets light through, but transforms it. And in this balance between clarity and mystery, there's something profoundly human.

Calvino, who loved the idea of crystal as a symbol, made it the emblem of clear thought, of rationality as a form of passion.

In Cosmicomics, the protagonist dreams of a single great crystal, an absolute and definitive order.
But Vug, his companion, prefers "when there are lots of small ones." She loves variety, the tiny life, the imperfect beauty of crystals that are never exactly the same.
I'm on Vug's side.
Because perfection, in the end, is never as interesting as transparency crossed by an imperfection that brings it to life.

“We need the diamond, not for us to have it, but for the diamond to have us…”