Scimparello N°11 - Winter 2023

SIAMO NOI

Detach, isolate, get lost, dream. Each of us has a place of the heart. It can be anywhere and everywhere: a place, a passion, a memory, a perfume. It is where you take refuge from the world to find yourself.

PETRA: Have you ever heard of Shinrin-yoku, the Japanese art of forest bathing? It involves the practice of long walks in the woods. Since the actual forest is far from my home, to disconnect from technology, I put a few drops of this essential oil in the diffuser, and it’s like having a mini forest at home. It really relaxes ...

PATRIZIA: Lake Toba. Sumatra, Indonesia. Summer 1976. I arrive in the evening. It is pitch dark and a local lady accompanies me to my house, made of wood, surrounded by vegetation and built on stilts. She leaves me some rice and I ask her if I can go to the bathroom. She smiles and tells me to follow the path. I find myself in the lake. That is the bath. Remote zone for me is to experience the same amused wonder of really being in another world.

ENRICO: My remote place is just a few kilometers from home: in the Hangar Bicocca - Milan, Anselm Kiefer’s Seven Heavenly Palaces, a permanent work, excite me every time with their fascinating mystical charge, which leaves room only for self-reflection.

ROSSELLA: The little islands of the Castles of Cannero, suspended over the waters of Lake Maggiore. There is my comfort zone, or rather my place of the soul. In summer I circumnavigate them by boat. In winter, shrouded in fog, I just watch them from the shore. Close but distant. And I feel ‘at home’.

PATRICIA: One place where I unplug: inside the temazcal in Ibiza! The ceremonial sweat lodge is like being in the womb, warm, dark and safe. Every song and prayer done together with the shaman and other women is purification for the body and healing for the soul. I came out re-born.

ALEJANDRA: Since I moved to Porto, for the last 5 years my disconnection moment is diving into to the sea. Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring, all year long. Early in the morning, it´s like a meditation moment in communion with nature. While floating I´m listening to the sounds of the sea, my whole body into the cold salty water, contemplating the sky and also closing my eyes, breathing deeply and relaxing.

TERESA: I am lucky enough to live a stone’s throw from the sea. The best time to get away from everything is at sunset, it feels like looking at a painting that instills serenity and peace.

GABRIELLA: My place far from the world is my garden by the lake. Every time I need to find myself, I go to tend my flowers, and they heal me.

FRANCO: I play my bass guitar and I could be anywhere. In a world that’s only mine, my more profound remote zone.

MARIANGELA: The place where I can truly disconnect and reconnect with myself is Gressoney, a small village in the Aosta Valley to which I am particularly attached. I love contemplating nature, walking in the silence of the woods. It’s a place that instills absolute peace.