I thought the words of Bruno Cucinelli were an appropriate tribute and homage amidst the tragic scenes we have all been watching in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan—one of Asia’s jewels.
“You, oh Asia, so far away yet close, land of nomads, of emperors and monks, and worked by persistent farmers and myths, land of bold warriors and sophisticated thinkers, where spirituality is in the soul of everyone, free and loyal only to the heart.
How many people in the history of the West have dreamed of your moon-lit silver shores, your fabulous seas populated by monstrous fish, your mountains and valleys that hide gardens of eternal spring, windy prairies where your scattered clouds weave a kind of white wool that I do not know; where entire underground entire armies deployed for the war seem to shout and, in the sky about the tree of life, disquieted shamans fly to capture evil souls and render balance to the spirit!
How many have told tales of fantastic animals and ancient dinosaurs—today’s colored paper dragons that come to life each year amidst the glow of bright lanterns in the night lit by fireworks! How many people have dreamed under your kites that fill the sky and trembled with emotion in the circus before the bodies of folded gymnasts as arcs of acacia wood under the canopy of a huge tent!
How many have followed without hope the patient secret of fine porcelain, the mysteries of the daily rites transformed in prayer, the windy silences of high solitary monasteries, the charm of the inconceivable, the strength of what is tenuous, and the painted alphabet where each letter is a word of art and a miracle of nature.
And you, oh Asia, so shy and indomitable, gentle and wild, have looked to us just as eager to learn, to love, to build, to work, to live. You have welcomed our weary travelers and have not spared them your treasures; you opened the doors of your city and you have let them enter your forbidden city without being able to understand its mystery hidden in the red and gold of splendor and in the white of the eyes of every fugitive subject.
You wanted to know about our religions, accepting them all with spirituality, so diverse but no less profound or true than others—spirituality free and rich in sap that does not die.
You were not afraid, you have not lost yourself. You just desired, transfusing the blood of peoples so far, men who will try again today one by one among the doors of the new world in the new space where the great meets the minute as an immense and quiet flow of one of the great rivers: flowing water, the ocean around the world.
It really is a great spiritual river that joins the beaches today of the East and West, a brother river, which seems slow and thoughtful, mobile and faithful, harmonized to the nobility of the earth.
Spreading and fertile river, mixing the seeds with the seeds of a new world, so diverse from what had just been lived that we can hardly guess it so we look at it with eyes that dream.”
See the collection.
Photos & text Copyright Bruno Cucinelli, translation by Mark.