Gabriella Chieffo Italy Acquasala

With a dive, it leaves behind the safety of dry land. Now it finds itself here, in salt water, a mirror of the enveloping sky. A state of rest and movement in breathing, captivated by that primordial element. Purifying. Sacred. Water and salt. Life and wisdom. The branches of its soul swell and inhale knowledge. It remembers being a fish and then a reptile before becoming itself. To have known smells, tastes lives. It knows it was vertebra below the vertebrae, rocked by its breath, calmed by its heartbeats. In this salt water, made of little tears and little seas, it perceived the same smell that is here now, the never-ending smell of a breath that is the end of all smells. Spit that became flesh. Dived into dryness with a wave. Having carried out the ritual, that includes the power and magic of regeneration through generation, it swallows a syllable of breath and becomes life.