“My insanity is the only sanity I know.” Mike Tyson

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“The theatre must once again achieve that every spectator is as entertained as he is in a middling American film.” Bertolt Brecht

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“If you can’t bite a dog, don’t show him your teeth.” Mexican proverb

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“Most species inhabiting the earth display more or less similar behavior across all latitudes, while our cultures, languages, conventions or treaties often differ considerably within very short distances and under comparable climatic conditions.” Michel Serres

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“Move the body like water at speed to gain the maximum kinetic force to travel from foot to hand.” adiyangmian, gesehen auf Instagram

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Life is the capacity to organize responses to external force.

Life is the ability to use external force to mobilize one’s own energy.

No enemy contact without force. Force interactions are mutual (Newton’s 3rd law), but not necessarily symmetrical.

Newton’s 3rd Law (Law of Action and Reaction): For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

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Instincts cannot “see” our environment. They respond to primal danger signals, while the participant, using cognitive reasoning, perceives no risk beyond the temporary loss of comfort.

Maximum performance is interpreted by our instincts as a threat. Breath control can activate the parasympathetic nervous system, damping these subcortical protection programs. Dynamic, playful movement patterns engage the hunting mode, replacing fear with motivation and producing flow and reward states.

Gradual exposure to limits and repeated successes teach the nervous system that maximum performance is allowed and safe. Performance emerges when the nervous system learns that its ancient protective programs are redundant in the modern context. The invisible brake releases, muscle tension becomes adaptive, joints remain mobile – and force flows.

Magma Pool

The Northern Cape is a geological archive. In this region, Precambrian crystalline and metasedimentary rock formations appear, including gneisses and granitoids, dated between 2.5 and 3 billion years old. The rock is older than most of the present-day continental crust and forms part of the Kaapvaal Craton, one of the most stable and ancient continental cores.

Hydrologically, the pans of the Northern Cape form a closed system, draining no water to the sea. Sodium chloride accumulates mainly in depressions of sandstone and shale. Rare rainfall events create semi-permanent waterholes. These ephemeral reservoirs allow plants, animals, and humans to survive in an arid environment. In the traditions of indigenous peoples, these water sources are intertwined with mythological and cosmological aspects of their culture, as well as with social organization.

Here, water is trapped in time.

We discovered a bathing spot. Surrounded by cliffs that rose like watchtowers, the place seemed paradisiacal. The sky was pale pink, the rock wine-red. The water, an elder had said, is the blood of the land. It preserves the stories of the ancestors. Whoever bathes absorbs the earth’s power. Between granite boulders, hardy coastal shrubs thrived. Lichens coated the rocks.

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We stood on a plateau, nearly five hundred meters above the Atlantic. The sun hung low, and the red sandstone glowed as if it still carried the fire of its formation. The ridge belongs to some of the oldest geological witnesses on Earth. Its rocks date back to the Archaean, over 2.5 billion years ago. At that time, the Earth was young—a magma pool.

Below us, the Benguela Current met the coast with its cold, nutrient-rich waters. Fog crept between the cliffs onto the plateau, settling like a thin veil over the red stone. We watched cormorants and gulls circle the skies.

We reached Dalton Gorge—a fissure in the landscape. The descent was steep. We passed a farngarden that seemed to exist as an escapist enclave. Ferns need moisture, so in these arid environments they survive only in microhabitats. Ferns are older than anything we can touch with our hands. Older than dinosaurs, they enriched the primordial vegetation that once formed immense forests. They arose some four hundred million years ago in the Devonian. Many of the fern species we see today are directly descended from these early forms. They are living fossils. Millions of years before the first bird, long before humans set foot on this continent, they thrived in steamy jungles.

The earth burned beneath my feet. The wind came from nowhere, turning suddenly, rushing through the gorge. I heard it whisper in a language we had long forgotten.

Undoubtedly, the canyon had once been a place of worship.