“Cammina cammina” (“The Long Walk”) is the latest venture from the Tribes of Italy: a dauntless and pacific journey on foot from Milan to Naples to mark the 150th anniversary of Italian Unity, using our steps to stitch back together a country that appears to be suffering from disunity as it is increasingly being laid waste.
Milan, 24 March 2011
The atmosphere has been oppressive in Italy these past years, months and weeks. A pall hangs over our lives; a noxiousness that seems to have affected not just politics but every other area of our lives.
And yet, up and down the country, in its many hidden recesses, individuals and associations are giving birth to unexpected things and moving in many right directions: people who are not immobilized by opposition for opposition’s sake, by righteous rejection; people who are a living expression of a regenerative, foreshadowing force. This is the new, original, bottom-up development that has occurred these past years in Italy.
The time has come to do something to give an imprint to this new development, to this new beginning.
Our idea is to embark on a journey together. Precisely when everything is (seems to be) static, the time has come to set ourselves in motion. Our ability to set our minds and bodies in motion through time and space is the one thing that can never be taken away.
Aspirations that people haven’t dared harbour for a long time are a precondition for living a life worthy of the name. To name but a few: health, inner strength, a capacity for feeling and thought, eagerness, high spirits, altruism, a rejection of injustice, liberty, friendship, love…
There are glimmers of light – many glimmers of light – in the pall of darkness overhanging Italy. We must feed these glimmers, combine them, fan them into life so that they may join and shine with other glimmers.
We are calling for individuals and groups, men and women to undertake this basic, unshakeable, unarmed, contagious and proliferative act: to embark on a journey – even a portion of a journey – across Italy, on foot, each according to their ability and what time they can spare.
Little does it matter whether it’s ten paces or seven hundred kilometres. What matters is that anybody who wants to come and share the journey with us can join us en route between Milan and Naples.
A line of people, setting in motion not just their bodies but their minds in a silent, flagless, slogan- and banner-free procession. Minds and bodies together, in motion once more, crossing this divided, unravelling country that some would like to divide and unravel further still, as we encompass Italy in a single embrace.
Our lives are unravelling. Italy is unravelling. Let’s start walking and use our steps to stitch the nation back together again.
Contact Tiziano Colombi for more information:
tiz.colombi@gmail.com
340 4975766
STARTS 20 MAY 2011, 8.00 AM, from Milan (Cascina Cuccagna, Via Cuccagna 2/4, on the corner of Via Muratori).
