How do we learn to inhabit a place?

Emergency “Walked out this morning, I don’t believe what I saw, Hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore…” sang The Police in Message in a Bottle—lyrics that now sound like a premonition of our present, in which it is hard to distinguish between Sting’s cries for help and the plastic that plagues our seas. The word “emergency” by definition indicates a critical and unforeseen situation that demands for immediate intervention: its etymology thus refers to a sudden state, for which a remedy must urgently be found. However, our times are marked by a number of continuous states of emergency – the exact opposite of exceptional events – of the most various kinds, which perpetuated themselves in time: from the trails of the recent pandemic, to the unresolved environmental and climatic crisis, as well as the humanitarian, social, geopolitical and economic crisis: a list large enough for filling this text by herself. Getting back to the meaning of this word, what makes us trouble is the total absence of reaction by our leaders, and this inactivity has been cyclically repeating itself in modern history.