We’re off, finally! This Tuesday’s “Tè dei Folli” (mad tea party) will be held on the Tonino Lane boat. After purchasing our ticket (Tonino is a stickler for boats!), we settle into our seats on the wooden benches. The journey will include circumnavigating the Pulse Pavilion and taking in the buildings we’ve dotted around it. Dominating everything is the large, semi-transparent dome that crowns the circular building where everyone can display their creations. Many Craft residents have already done so, and others will, in the shared desire to get to know each other better.
Some sailors leaving
We leave the large harbor built by Tonino Lane with its well-equipped bar, the Coast Guard headquarters, the boat storage facilities, and other improvements by Lorenza, Fiona, and Eva: the greenhouses and gardens, the pine forest, the department stores, the lighthouse, the platforms with Vietri ceramics, umbrellas, and comfortable, cool canvas chairs. So, off we go! There’s a certain thrill in facing the open sea! Once underway, the sailors enjoy the landscape that gradually unfolds before their eyes, chatting. Here is the improbably fascinating Stonehenge, Monica’s large villa, Eva Kraai’s bar, Dings’s large house, the nightclub, and here is the lighthouse that leads us back to the port from which the group departed. Meanwhile, we chatted, each of us went back in time, each with our own memories: school, holidays, life’s small and large occasions resurfaced in an atmosphere of friendly exchange. Nostalgia, simple joys rediscovered in the story, laughter and comments accompany the lapping of the water. It’s virtual, but we’re not far from feeling its beneficial freshness. True, it’s the view that dominates this virtual experience, but it can also carry with it sensations felt in the real world. Sailing, for example, gives the same feeling as a real adventure, between relaxation and anxiety. Of course, we know you can’t drown here! But who hasn’t felt, at least once during their vacation, the sensation of being swallowed by the sea! And here everything comes back, the whole array of sensations and emotions, like anthropological memory.
Some of the places visited during the tour
The goal, then, has been achieved! An afternoon together, despite geographical distances and evident or latent differences as people, only seemingly disguised as avatars, but still people. Craft has welcomed a knot of humanity to its island home: Pulse Pavilion. The curiosities the island offers and the thrills of navigating the sea have strengthened the sense of community. Then there will be many other places to discover together, many inhabitants to meet, distant in reality, close in the virtual. And that’s fine! Here, everyone fills their loneliness, expands their desire for new friends, expresses their vision of the world, reveals and strengthens or integrates their interests. We converse, we meet, and we clash. Meanwhile, the boat sails, and at every turn we rediscover ourselves as navigators of life, virtual or real, but life nonetheless.
And here we are again at the bar that, as always, hosts us, ready to resume our journey with our chatter and a cup of tè dei folli.
Thanks to Eva Kraai for the beautiful photos.
