23/01/2022
"WHY DID YOU GO TO LIVE IN CALABRIA?" once asked the writer Ginevra Dell'Orso who, after years dedicated to Public Relations and Interior Design, decides to give up the mad frenzy of Milan and Los Angeles to move to a magical village on the Ionian coast.
Here is her answer.
Calabria is an anomalous region, in some ways "surreal", which boasts numerous records, including many uniqueness.
It is the region with the highest unemployment rate, but at the same time it has the cleanest air and the highest biodiversity in Europe. There is no mad rush to tourism, but it has more than 800 kilometers of coastline from which high mountain peaks rise, from which you can even ski while contemplating the landscape.
There are very few industries, few inhabitants, but a nature that reigns supreme and unchallenged ... There are canyons and waterfalls, millenary cities and megaliths.
Not to mention the food: this year the New York Times even elected it the region where you eat best in Italy: not so much for the recipes (which are actually quite poor) as for the quality of the raw materials.
With each passing year, the world becomes aware of this forgotten region, and almost timidly seeks an approach that is not at all obvious.
You have to have a bit of a particular worldview to love this place.
You have to know how to see, and not look!
It is necessary to search among the small streets of the ancient villages perched on the hills overlooking the two seas, without fear of being projected into an ancient world, still protected, sometimes naive, but with a great desire to look into the future.
When I left Milan to move here, I always met the disappointment of most of my acquaintances, who saw my move as a kind of escape, a "spiritual" retreat to escape from a hectic and ravaged place like my city.
In reality, I have nothing against Milan: I was born and raised there, I met people who are still part of my emotional sphere, and this is where my origins start.
But life is short, and the planet is too big to limit existence to a small part of the world. I wanted to raise my children in an "enchanted" place that was not necessarily disconnected from reality. And above all I wanted to stay in Italy because, despite everything, I love this country!
It was not easy to start everything from scratch: invent a job, look for a house in which to raise two children, enter the psychology of the place, be accepted by the inhabitants and at the same time accept many cultural aspects that are light years away from mine and mine existential vision.
Yet, almost 7 years later, here I am writing a chapter of my life that wants to praise, and thank, this wonderful place.
Because, despite a thousand difficulties, the more I look at what is happening in the world, the happier I am to live in this land. And I'm not alone: more and more people decide to break away from the dominant system and opt for an alternative choice, made up more of moments and less of things. Anyone who made this choice like me knows it well. In my country alone, where we are just over 200, there are characters who come from the most disparate parts, and they all seem to have come out of some novel.
After all, to live here you need imagination, love, enchantment: you still need to be amazed by the beauty of nature when, in spring, wildly, it covers every inch of land with flowers of all kinds.
You have to be able to feel a kind of reverence when the north winds roar in winter and fill the skies with rainbows.
We still need to get excited when the pairs of dolphins sail the seas and the turtles reach the water after their eggs hatch.
And then there is the sky ... a sky that anyone who has passed through these parts cannot forget.
All the shades of blue manifest themselves from sunrise to sunset: even the clouds look like those of cartoons. Sometimes soft and frothy, sometimes carved by the winds.
And then there is the sea ... omnipresent, even from the highest peaks of the mountains.
After all, Calabria is a large mountain that plunges into the water: it is green, very green, always in bloom. It is rich in springs, rivers and streams that descend to the valley to divide the borders of each village.
The village where I live is perhaps one of the closest to the sea: from the top of a hill, nestled between two rivers which, from the mountains, give rise to a valley, I took my home. A classic local house, built with river stones, with walls almost one meter thick, surrounded by trees, centuries-old oaks, and lots and lots of greenery. On the horizon the Ionian Sea, behind the mountains, and around the village and the river. Wherever you lose your gaze, it is always a beautiful sight. Not even two kilometers, and here is the beach, which for at least six months is my refuge, my gym, my meditation, my point of contact when it comes to making important decisions ... my fun.
A special sea, clean, populated by fish, crystalline, deep, very deep!
For years they have asked me: how can you stay in a place where there is nothing? Anything? This "nothing" is everything! That's all it's worth being on this planet for.
No, I'm not Calabrian ..., none of my relatives are Calabrian, and I haven't married even a Calabrian. Simply, this place captivated me with its beauty, with its obstinacy, with its being so raw and at the same time imbued with magic.
I chose it, I faced it, I even challenged it when he put me at the crossroads of choices that happen only rare times in life ... and I'm still here, happy to have chosen the most difficult but most exciting one .
For this I will never stop thanking this land, this corner of the world that is still true, throbbing, where you can still dream and believe in small daily miracles.
Thanks to this sea full of life, to the dominant greenery, to the people of my small village and the neighboring ones; thanks to the river that makes me fall asleep every night and thanks to that fertile piece of land where I grow the best vegetables in the world. Thanks to the intoxicating scents of spring, which I thought were exclusive to some exotic island, and thanks to all this nature that cares about man and his rules and appropriates everything he wants.
Ginevra Dell'Orso
From the bulletin board of Mohammad Dabbah Alkilani
