Passenger by Pietro Milici
The noun passenger derives directly from the homonym adjective that refers, in general, to everything that is of passage. “A person who travels in a conveyance, such as a car or a train, without participating in its operation.” (cit.) How is it possible that the passenger is not a participant? He is aware of the action. He knows where he is going. He perceives the landscape around him. He is involved the movement.
He becomes a participant in the act as a collector of ideas, images, changes, of the becoming of the territory, which has an effect on emotions, on thought, a change in the internal landscape, or the “inscape” as it was called by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins thought that this characterized everything in the universe and that it was the distinctive framework that constitutes an individual dynamic identity – an introspective growth made of moments and memories, some apparently not important, that are forgotten during a trip, of which we know or we remember only the point of departure and arrival. We live in the city. We go to work. We go to the supermarket. We are born in a place, but we die thousands of miles away. We are constantly on a journey. Are we aware as passengers in our own lives?