Today's reality has thrown us into a chaotic shuffle of basic needs, social interactions and information flow, leaving no possibility to give space to the emotions associated with what we experience.
Isolated and more and more aware that we are trapped in a system subject to different rules, that of the accumulation of power, applying in a variety of ways material, physical, mental and spiritual violence, and ruthlessly exploiting what is essential, leaving in its wake ruined places and extinct species and meanings.
Holding on tightly to everything that connects us to our lives and our dreams, we try to face all this while we are already involved, being physically and mentally exhausted.
Reflecting on the landscape and from within the landscape, I decided to get involved in the grassroots movement for Free Mountains. Sharing information, exchanging experiences and practical actions, and participating in everyday activities was an urgency for me. I realized that what matters to all of us is feelings. It is the discomfort caused by hidden or overt arrogance and hubris; it is the fear that eats away the guts.
In small gestures of disobedience in the face of it, in sticking our tongues out to fear, in meeting the "other" and the " different", I recognized in their eyes the same fragility and the same longing for courage to reinvent life.
"How to cope with all this" was written in every look, movement or proposition, and between the lines I found the most tender expressions of this anguish, always sensing that I was included and embraced by human relationships.
This was the point where the feeling of discomfort faded.
I opened my heart and mind to the CRITICAL LANDSCAPES in the mountainous region of Agrafa where this unprecedented kind of encounters occur, creating opportunities of space where "love" could happen as the catalytic motivation for caring, advocacy and the chance to dream the future.
Everything points to our deep need and effort to "inhabit" the territories and make our voices heard in shaping our lives within them.