Flegrei: a state of mind

The Flegrei: a state of mind With the phrase "i Flegrei" it would seem to trivially identify a people or inhabitants of the Phlegraean area; the residents of the municipalities of that area, but it is not quite so, at least for me. I believe that defining the Phlegraean people is really an understatement. The Phlegraeans are a mental state, not characteristic of a specific area, but specific to anyone who has to do with those places steeped in history and culture, characterized by dense colors like magma and simple like the blue of the sky that merges with that of the sea. A thousand-year history that you breathe as soon as you think about it, a taste that you can taste in your mouth even when you've been gone for months. The travelers, all for one reason or another, who head towards the Phlegraean area, as soon as they are in the Montesanto station, already savor their journey through that tunnel of time, which represents the gateway to the Phlegraean area, which it will catapult you into a reality that, unlike others, is still full of the presence of a mythological past and that sees intact its beliefs, uses, customs, simplicity and genuineness. The Phlegraeans, therefore, have attracted my particular attention, they are those "travelers" who carry and feel within the spirit and the thought of the young Goethe who, in his journey in the Phlegrean fields, of 1787, wrote: "Under the purest sky the most insecure soil. Leftovers of unthinkable sad and sad splendor. Boiling waters, sulfur-colored crevasses, slag mountains opposed to vegetation, deserted, repulsive spaces; and then, finally, an ever more flourishing vegetation, which is affirmed wherever it can, which rises above all death ruins and around lakes and streams, affirming itself even with the most superb oak forest on the walls of an ancient crater ”. So, for some years now, I have been taking photographs of the Phlegraeans, men and women, who pass, stop and populate the Cumana stations and trains, searching, stopping, in their faces, the Phlegraean spirit.