Dom

My first journey was crossing a field on foot. I walked across the garden, rows of trees, unpaved roads, and damp meadows. I arrived at the border marked by the neighbour’s freshly ploughed land. Standing on the embankment, I focused on the thin, undulating ribbon dividing the sky and earth. The day was cold, and the smell of soil was strong. I was breathing earth, daydreaming of being the earth myself. I watched the horizon, the vast space above me, sensing the movements of celestial bodies. I had the feeling, indeed, I was sure, that I was made of the greyness of the sky, the light-heartedness of the clouds, the interstellar wind that drags everything with it, that arranges things according to the secret order of the eternal current. I felt that I was part of the earth on which I was standing, that I could lock the whole world in my fist with a sudden movement of my hand, like a conductor. I was everything, and everything was me. The first thought that has been unfolding inside me ever since, like a long braid of memories, is that I belong to no one, no human law reigns over me. I drew my strength from movement. Ever since then, my life has been a journey.

Like the pages of a travel diary, mine is the story of exploration, the road quest leading to fathom depths of the soul, where the eternal flow erases the maps of memories and redraws the geographies of the present, places where change becomes the only constant made up of farewells, nostalgia, and suspensions.
Narrating a journey is narrating time. The passage of time can be read in the transformation of things, places, and perspectives. Observing the way things change is a way of contemplating the meaning of migration, the need both for travelling and returning. Observing change is, therefore, a way to understand an archaic need to belong, to feel connected to one’s homeland, and to satisfy the thirst of being one’s children. That is why, in my journey, I speak of the visceral relationship with home, where coming back becomes touching on the very essence of myself. This essence, although changing over time, persists and resonates in all the elements of nature in their perpetual motion, in the continuous transformation within itself and others.