Costantinos Kavafis

Costantinos Kavafis, the famous Greek writer. A tribute, by this picture, to all the thought of Mediterranean

 

Brief account on ‘ “elsewhere” and ” questions “
 
The Mediterranean is here. We are it. Yet there seems a little moved away, always a few miles to the south, or east . How can a world, a culture, a meaning, be both here and elsewhere? Perhaps the Mediterranean is this anywhere else, or so we perceive from our air-conditioned meeting rooms, from the solid houses of the city, from hotel rooms where you can not even open the windows. So it is not the Mediterranean to be elsewhere, we who are not here.
 
It ‘ also happened with Time, with the spiritual well-being , with relations. They should be here, fundamental functions of our lives, and yet there are never any: Time is running out, and we always expect to have to do something today that we can not do; well-being, we should try to reach every moment of our life, and that instead becomes an hour of yoga three times a week, or thirty- minute jogging, or just an evening per month in serene solitude; relationships, destroyed by woek promiscuity and social opportunities, become only remote, virtual, distant. If we add to this the economic crisis of values, of perspectives, what framework pops-up from our time? Is there any space for dreams yet, for projects, hope, politics, love?
 
An existential magma starts to generate fruit when it becomes a question, or a series of questions whose answers would help understanding first, then action and life. A good question, then, is something very important. The questions are scary, because they push for research, analysis, meditation and dialogue. One question that does not generate an investigation, however, is the most tragic of defeats . How could you perceive a question and then not try to find an answer, no matter how difficult, no matter how uncomfortable and enigmatic ?
 
 
Because the cultural project of the Mediterranean
 
Here is why Mediterranea: sailing slowly in search of these answers. Or rather, to play, to reiterate, rephrase the questions. And that’s why here in this elsewhere so close and far away from us: the Mediterranean, the center of the world of knowledge, of culture, but also the place where the man was able to think and fear the thought, design and destroy, and where must exist a deep legacy of mistakes and good practices. As men of this time, we cannot but look here, in the macro area of the Mediterranean, heads, ideas, questions, possible answers to this complex era, tragically in crisis.
 
The search method will be the Mediterranean one: the Socratic dialogue, the meeting. So we’re going to the coasts of 29 countries, we will bring a message of peace, we will open the boat to intellectuals, writers, artists, journalists, men of culture, to meet our fellow men in the Mediterranean, ask them what they know, what they see from their point of observation, discuss with them, to listen and understand. Meet their thoughts, and through them, their countries, their prospects. You have to go to ask for the Mediterranean, we found this, and this will make the Mediterranea, aware that the unexpected meeting unexpected does not take us by surprise. Indeed, we are already waiting for it.
 
 
An ever-changing calendar of meetings
 
The route is uncertain, when sailing. So will the calendar of our business culture. We will upload news periodically, so unsystematic and unpredictable, and then tell what happened. You can participate, but you can also follow through video, texts, photographs. Many of our questions already resonate within us, as not only our questions. This will make them even more fascinating. Mediterranean have always liked questions from other people, as much for their similarity as for their inequality. That’s why here research is so useful.
 
Our activity in this area owes much to the Italian Cultural Institutes around the Mediterranean. In order to identify, contact, call the organization and we turned to them, they almost always responded with openness and enthusiasm. But not only the institutional actors wil assist our steps. The meetings, the readings, the trickles isolated ideas and thoughts play an important role along the way. So we must say thanks to the collaboration of the young writers of the blog Mediterranya, and especially in one of its most active leaders, Eugenio Dacrema, as well as the writer Gianluca Solera or our Turkish friends Asuman Samieli and Zeynep Sungur, and many many other travelers of thought and culture with which we have relationships with and which inevitably we will have along the route.

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