Among the places dear to my heart that are part of my memories, there is one that punctually resurfaces as summer approaches: the Passetto and its caves.
They are located in Ancona, a city half surrounded by the Adriatic, by its blue sea and its white, rocky coast.
The early morning June sun bathes it in a particular glow and suddenly the city appears for what it is: a thread of alienation from the rest of the Marche but more akin to Greece, as if once upon a time it had detached itself from a strip of some Ionian island and destined for exile.
In the light of dawn I particularly like this place, I feel like Leucothea who is reborn in the morning and like the goddess I emerge from the darkness freed from time that increasingly distances me from what I was.
I come back so graceful and childlike.
“There is a law, Ixion, who must be obeyed”
“But here, dear Nefele, The law doesn't arrive. And when the clear day comes and you approach the rock lightly, it's too beautiful to think about anymore."
I'm three years old and I'm floating in the water, fearless and without matter. My aunt watches me from the shore. Around here, they play with rocks and cement,
A somewhat daring architecture has designed the stretch of coast with a staircase
monumental, but I wanted the elevator because it was floating in the void.
My aunt talks to the neighbors about the sun. Her name is Vita, a superstition; after eleven dead children, her fate has changed with this name, and now it's there that she takes me to the sea and leads my dream.
I felt the perception of lightness here among these waters with greenish depths, among the cavemen who returned with the batana full of mussels while the women prepared the sauce.
Sometimes I thought they lived here all year round, in those caves furnished with little: a sink, a stove, a table and a few chairs.
The Passetto seemed like a small, modest village in the city of elegant neighborhoods, where I lived with my somewhat distracted and rudderless family.
My aunt was a sure point of reference, as was the Passetto in the morning and the swim I would enjoy. On the way home, my grandfather, the anarchist, was waiting for me. He sat on a bench on the avenue and, despite his age, still had his audience. As a good orator, he soared with his spirit.
There's no place in the Adriatic quite like Ancona. This city is a misunderstood island.
And even the character of its inhabitants is not understood, the true Ancona native is usually Spartan, sparing in his choices and in his words, at times crude, Arcadian mixed with laconic, in short he is Greek without knowing it but of the Mycenaean lineage not Minoan, that is, the one that comes from the Balkans.
What has changed Nefele?
Nothing and everything. Neither the sun nor the water. Men and their fates have changed.
The water, the wind, the rock, and the cloud are no longer yours; you can no longer hold them close to you, generating and living. Other hands now hold the world. There is a law, Ixion.
Which law?
You know, your fate, the limit.
Now there are caves decorated in white and blue as if you were on Lipari, a beach of river stones has arrived and a lifeguard who brings the sunbeds, but the underlying spirit has remained, free and salty, I feel it even on crowded days: the indomitable spirits never bow their heads even if tanned and wrinkled, they blend in with the bathers and some even have a little dog, God forbid, this is a free beach perhaps the only one truly left.
For how long?
But fate has still changed, Nephele,
What do you mean?
That has changed, we are all subservient to a stronger hand.
Who says that?
Don't tempt fate, it's fate. You play and don't know the immortals.
I would like to meet them, Nefele.
Ixion, you believe they are presences like us, like the night, the earth and old Pan, you are still young Ixion despite you are born under the old destiny.
They are immortal and cannot live alone. And if you disgust them, they will pounce on you and give you death, the death they know.
So can you still die?
You can still die and believe you are alive.
Ancona is a city that has suffered a thousand insults, a transit point with many connections and symbols that escape distracted travelers and even its fashionable inhabitants. The sea, however, is the silent witness of the lives that remain and are passed down, but also the latent mystagogue of another dimension that remains unknown to most.
Enough Ixion, intercede in matters that are not your concern.
Do you see that your dream is no longer enough?
And what do you think? to your dream as if it were real?
I beg you, Ixion, do not climb to the summit.
I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm fine here.
I miss everything and I can do without everything but memories.
leave those to me at least in the summer
in the morning
between the worn stones and the glare of the sun
So I'm going back down among the mortals at least now
for a short season.
Freely adapted from “Dialogues with Leucò” by Cesare Pavese
