Frozen tears fall from the rocks of Mount Fengari. They slip into the canyons, refreshing the earth’s veins, caressing our skin. There are places no one knows exist, where only the waters can reach, and from which only they can leave. Even courage finds limits in the cracks in the stone, which become ever more welcoming the higher the strength of our gaze pushes us. Beyond the wall, however, we never progress. Some corners remain a secret forever.
The wind rushes over the stones. It climbs the trees, skims the waves, and blends the landscape into its tiniest patterns. We are always in a different place, every minute. We wish we were a dragonfly; we look at each other with a knowing smile, while the dark silence slowly slips within us. The opportunity to do nothing is immense, so much so that in the end, even those who don’t try succeed. You learn to swim without even realizing you’re in the water.
Time disappears, blending with the clouds. The sun replaces the moon, the stars are pebbles, the galaxies rivers. The mainland is there, in front of us. Yet it seems so far away. Our world has no sides or dimensions. There is no gravity, no time. Dawn is a fire rising from the darkness, a new face every time. Despite our attempts to have a place, a moment, a ritual to keep the rhythm of things, we always end up losing it in the illusion of holding it in our hands.
Many land on the island of Ogygia. A confused emotion quickly takes possession of their blood, seizes them and strips them.
Naked on the outside and naked on the inside, enveloped by branches and currents, we begin to breathe. We don’t realize that the days become weeks, the minutes become birds, eyes are the hands of a clock.
There are people who mingle, lose themselves and find themselves again. Who search and let themselves go, falling down waterfalls and sinking into pools. And when he finds himself, now far out at sea, he opens his eyes and is back at the beginning. As if reborn, he begins again.
But there is also a people watching us arrive. They watch us as we sleep, as we vomit our selves, as we love a hand that touches our skin. Then they watch us struggle to leave, turning melancholy toward the Island, while the foam traces the wake of our farewell in the waves.
They are the people born here and never leave their land. The indigenous people of Samothraki. Their eyes light up in the night. They watch us from the mountains, in the squares and between the walls, they slip between the camps and our thoughts. A faint light sometimes reveals their horns and wild beard. When the sky is dark, they are everywhere, you just have to look for them. The goats that sighs secrets in the moonlight, the feline that speaks of us, the crow that watches the sunset on the dry branch on the beach. They let us experience deception and discovery as if we’d just cried out our first cry, the one that opens our lungs for the first time.
Restlessness always ends up mingling with joy. They become companions in waking up, friends in going to bed. Melodies in the air on the path. So in the forest we feel like leaves. We look at the ancient plane trees, thinking that we will never have those deep roots, but that we could still hug someone so tightly, as they do with their land.
We don’t know when we arrived. We don’t know if we’ll leave. After a while, we won’t even be sure we were ever really there.
Read it in :
Italiano
