Let the connection flow

by Michela Mosca (Italy)

Making a local connection Spain

The first rays of light are raising upon the golden peaks of Cierra del Cid, shy as an offspring who hide behind his mother. The dust is wrapping my feet, and the sunrise lights up the rough landscape forward me. “Are you tired yet?”, asks me Juan, with a tough Spanish accent that always disarms me. “I’m fine, I was just admiring the dawn”, I replied. I admit, I was breathless. That old, suntanned farmer of Sax, a little village in the hinterland of southern Spain is possessed by a warm, contagious energy. It was his idea: coming to my hosts house when the stars still cover the clean sky, picking me up and leading me up to the hills, where the desert covers the ground. My Spanish is not good, I feel so awkward and I am constantly blushing, because it feels uncomfortable when you have so much to say and you can’t find the words. Like an alien, like I have always felt in my life. But Juan is comprehensive, so can see that I won’t give up on me: with joyful patience, he helps me to express what I want to say, he repeats slowly, he encourages me. “You are brave, aren’t you?”, he asks me, referring to my decision of packing my bag and leaving for my first solo trip, from my comfort zone in Italy to the unknown of that volunteer project. “I don’t know”, I think. That’s the truth, I don’t know if I deserve to be considered brave. I am that type of girl who people barely notice, who constantly lose the contact with reality and find herself swimming in the depth of her imagination. I have never done something brave in my life, so far at least. I try to explain, as much as my language knowledge allows me, and I can see he understands. I feel so comfortable with a stranger, more than I have felt with my close ones, every time I touched the theme. Suddenly, no words are needed anymore. We have reached the top of a beautiful hill, with olive trees surrounding the peak; the sun is getting higher, and the heat touches softly my skin. Have you ever felt like the simplest, smallest actions seem to be different when you are in unusual places? At different conditions? I used to breath differently when I was spending my first Workaway in Valenciana, a community between Alicante and Torrevieja. Deep, slow breaths. I used to walk slowly in Spain, too. Nothing was in a hurry, there. The colorful neighborhoods of the little village of Sax whispered me to stay still, and look around. I listened to them, as I listened to Juan, the unstoppable Spanish farmer. You are brave. He said to me. The streets said it to me. The landscape said it to me. Finding a connection was a sort of hobby, when I was a child: every time I got to a new place, I discovered a new beach or a new green spot, I just shut the eyes and let my mind flow. I’ve always got an answer. It’s not easy to explain what the “contact”, as I have always called this mystic sensation, means to me. It’s pure vibrant synesthesia, the ability to smell colors, ear the voices of the images, feel the atmosphere of a sight. Spain helped me to get in contact with the deepest aspects of this gift, nurturing an attitude that I had often considered strange, unexplainable, maybe weird and embarrassing (especially when I turned toward someday and asked “Do you feel it too?”). As I let my mind go back to those days, I am still there, on the top of the hill, the medieval castle of Sax in front of me. I have pushed myself to the top, I have overcome my fear. So yes Juan, you are right. I feel brave.