As writers, we have to experience some resilience out of our worldly condition, which provides us with all the stuff that we may need for our literary creation. We all know both extremes: on one hand, writers who are always taking notes, on the other hand the ones who trust the remains of their memory as raw material for creation – of course together with all information we can get from printed and digital archives. All this proves us that even if we know that we can never be islands, isolated from the environment, yet there are moments when we have to do as if we were islands, in order to close ourselves in our workshops to produce the drafts of our books. And in the next moments we leave that enclosure in order to communicate again, not only to recharge our batteries, but also to see how our new works interact with the public – as children that come from us but for which we cannot be responsible any more. And it is ok like that.
But if the dynamics of literary creation have always for us a mixture of lonely and social moments, we are something else than writers. In our globalized world we have to reformulate the form of citizenship, as citizens of the environment. Each gesture counts and is not only connected with everyone who perceives it and everything that it concerns. It means a huge difference if we make a peaceful or an aggressive gesture, or a gesture of defense, not only towards people but also towards the elements of our environment. The same happens with words.
As citizens of the environment, we have to handle with two contradictory tendencies. Our common task is both to respect the environment and to question what we mean that could or should be changed. In their extreme forms, respect touches conformism and questioning keeps fragile limits with rebellion. We can remain in our inner realm of peace and say to ourselves that in this way we are respecting the environment, living and letting live. But our critical conscience tells us that it is not exactly so. Then we have to face the more difficult task, the one of asking uncomfortable questions, in order to fulfill our double condition of environment citizenship.