The Shrine of Language

The corn field surrounding the house was harvested the second week of October and I can again gaze out of the kitchen window and lose myself in the rolling landscape. I am constantly amazed at the high level of expertise in agricultural engineering that is the pride and joy of Denmark. The machinery for reaping, and processing corn on the spot, is simply remarkable. A huge contraption slays the stalks with two vicious looking shears greedily ingesting huge bushels of corn. Inside the belly of the monster everything is hashed to a pulp and pumped out through a funnel directly into the crate of the tractor running and panting beside the roaring beast. It could indeed by concocted by the giants of Norse mythology forged by blacksmiths in the underworlds of Vulcan and his Finnish equivalent, Illmarinen.

The stubs of the corn provide a welcome shelter for the pheasants feeding on the spillover and prowling cats screening the exposed mice holes. They were joined by small groups of deer delighting in the abundance of rich fodder left on the ground when it missed the crate. Geese like to rest in cropped corn fields because they blend into the hues of dull beige and grey, and disappear behind the stumps, their heads, like periscopes, occasionally peeping above.

Soon after the harvest, migrating geese and cranes from Northern Scandinavia broke their flight towards the South with a much-anticipated stopover on Bornholm. The weather was perfect, unusually warm, with many insects hatching attracting famished birds eager to stock up before resuming their migration. Thus the field became the feeding ground of hundreds of cranes and just as many geese, each keeping to their own. For several days, it was like being in a fantasy world, or the dream of the birds, at the heart of their migration pattern. I watched them swoop and dive around the house, practice new flight formations, honking eagerly at each other, the geese trying to outcry the cranes – not very successfully. From the kitchen table I would eat my lunch almost among the cranes picking at the remains in the corn field. It was impossible not to be in awe and dumb-struck by the beauty of creation endlessly unfolding in front of my enthralled eyes. The highlight was, without any doubt, the lines of migrating geese and elegant cranes soaring off towards the vanishing point on the horizon, black lines sparkling on a backdrop painted in the fluorescent colours of an autumn sunset.

I savoured each moment, resting in the beauty of creation constellating, moment by moment, in front of my hungry eyes. Well aware of the draw of migration undergirding the experience, I wanted it to last forever, or at least as long as possible. I wanted to postpone the moment when, suddenly, things move on, possibly too soon for the mind inebriated by the beauty. Nonetheless, I sensed that I, too, was readying myself for a migration. I could feel my own wings growing and the restlessness of wanting to spread them and be gone. As it happens, I was blessed with a micro migration which took me to Copenhagen for a couple of days and, from there, back to Italy and the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. I had been invited by the Swiss embassy to a literary event during the World Week of Italian Language which takes place annually in October. The Swiss ambassador, who comes from Ticino the Italian-speaking part of the country, had suggested to his colleague the Italian ambassador to invite a Swiss author, Fabio Andina, to give a presentation of his latest novel Sedici Mesi.

The book tells the dramatic story of Andina’s maternal grandparents in the last months of the second World War. They lived in a small Italian village directly on the border with Switzerland demarcated by the river. His grandfather had been helping Jews to cross over to safety via the mountain trails. A jealous neighbour had denounced him to the authorities. He was imprisoned, sent off to Mauthausen and the couple were separated for sixteen months without knowing where the other one was and what was happening. At the end of the war, liberated from the concentration camp, his grandfather walked back home at night through the ensuing chaos. Once back home, he never talked about what happened, what he had endured and how he had survived. All this time, his wife had been praying to the Virgin Mary for his safe return and, should he be returned, she vowed to name their daughter after the Virgin. Eight months after they were reunited, a girl was born. They called her Immaculata and she is Fabio’s mother. For this novel, Andina has chosen not to focus on the historical facts, but to imagine the silent conversation that kept alive the spouses separated by the dramatic events of a crazy world, a stream of thoughts and goodwill conveyed through the heart to the inaccessible other in lieu of the love letters that could not be written. Next year for the 80^th anniversary of the end of WW2, he will be releasing a documentary based on the information he researched.

I was mesmerised by Fabio’s presentation and delighted to be once again bathing in Italian culture and language. I relished the feast laid out to cap the evening with traditional Italian antipasti and regional wines. It was strange, in an interesting way, to find myself in a typical Danish environment and architecture momentarily visited by flavours of Rome and the region of Lombardy that rests at the feet of the Swiss Alps. I was overcome by homesickness for Italy, a nostalgia for the years I lived and worked in Locarno at the foot of the Alps. But, most of all, I felt my heart cracked open by the yearning for the language, to be able to think and converse in the idiom of Dante.

I often think of the Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran’s statement that we do not inhabit a nation, but a language. This has always felt true for me, each time I found myself struggling to master a foreign language and its cultural idiosyncrasies. I started this particular pilgrimage of identity at an early age when my family relocated in French-speaking Switzerland. It has taken me several decades to unapologetically affirm that English is my homeland. Maybe the final piece of the puzzle, validating the scope of Cioran’s premise, was offered to me that evening when, like the migrating geese and cranes, I rested and was nourished, literally and figuratively, by Italian in Denmark. Truly a subjective experience of realised wholeness, one born from the revelations arising at the end of an odyssey, whose destination, ultimately, is always to come back home to ourselves.

In September, we completed the eight pathways to selfhood which comprise the odyssey with wholeness. I am currently doing the final edits of the manuscript and the second volume of the odyssey, Pathways to Selfhood, will soon be released. Meanwhile, with a small circle of friends, I have been listening to what arises in the empty space between human consciousness and divine presence. Last month we explored the temple of aloneness; this month we reverently enter the shrine of language to listen to, and breathe in, the words dwelling between the heart and the light. The shrine of language is the place where, in the silence, stillness and solitude of the soul, we unveil the language of the heart that enables us to explore the depths of the human psyche and to break open the columns of light of both the male and the female psyche beyond our usual understanding of gender boundaries.

These gatherings are exploratory and very intimate. I have therefore decided not to open them yet, but to enter these sacred spaces with the companions who followed me down all eight of the pathways to selfhood. Their faithfulness is not so much about diligently shadowing my steps, but more in their willingness, like Odysseus’ seafaring companions, to tie me to the mast and row me past the dangers of bewitched seas.