When you lose the dearest person, for example the one who brought you into the world, something inside you changes forever. It’s like an emotional Big Bang in the universe of your life. It’s not just pain. It’s as if an invisible door opened between this world and another.
From that moment you begin to look for them in places where the boundary is thinner: in silence, in the evening’s shadow, on moonlit paths.
I chose the Kingdom of Montalcinello because there I can still feel and perceive. Feelings that in mad cities, now cut off from nature and memory, are slowly denied. Here I can fight to honor the people I have lost but who still arm my immortal arm, as she used to tell me when I was afraid (and with her that, too, passed away).
For me this secret passage is like a stargate: a vibrant gateway that connects what normally stays apart. The world of the living and that of roots, of memory, of deep time. Thanks, first and foremost, to our ancestors, giants who created it with a metaphysical effort, to connect far more deeply than we do, who today only look for Wi‑Fi.
And so I tried to turn pain into practical fervor. Because what truly bound the communities of the past was shared work. They couldn’t afford the luxury of splitting up: building, growing, repairing, handing down were acts that held people together and gave meaning to existence. Today, instead, many unhappy people can’t find the courage to change their situation. They’re held back by apparent security, by conformism, by traditionalism: all things that seem to guarantee peace of mind. But for an adventurous soul there is nothing more devastating than a certain future.
The true core of a person’s vital spirit is a passion for adventure (and the Scogli were that too).
It’s this passion that brought Silvia and me to this passage between worlds.
Truly changing means having the courage to radically transform your lifestyle. It means starting to do things you would never have imagined doing, or that you never dared to do.
Because exploring doesn’t mean only crossing new places.
It means crossing yourself.
