Every onion has ten skins and under every skin is concealed a truth. So goes a Lemusan proverb that Pater Cosquer handed down to his people back in 1754. Ten prophecies that you recognise with tears in your eyes – ten watery-eyed insights into the deeper meaning of things. In southern Calabria there is a region where the onion and the truth, «Cipolla» and «Prophecia», are intimately intertwined with one another, where one sprouts out of the other, and each one is an integral part of the other.
The Capo Vaticano, a land-strip over the Tyrrhenian Sea, derives its name from the Vates, the prophets and soothsayers that had inhabited the place and predicted the outcome of the journeys of passing seafarers, be it the luck of foreign harbours or threats by Skylla and Charybdis. The region’s capital is called Tropea, a place celebrated as the capital of the onion, the «Cipolla rossa di Tropea», a type of red onion that grows luxuriantly in the sandy local soil. The place is affectionately called «la dolce», the sweet. So, let’s fly there and dive into the deepest truths of Capo Vaticano hidden in the heart of Allium ceppa. Peel the onion and carefully scan the signs that hold meaning for our further journey. Close your eyes and count backwards: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…
The 1st skin: You will learn that however enthusiastically and extensively you may travel, your atlas of the world will always remain a fragment, your order of things a fiction in the best of circumstances – and that there is no answer to the crucial questions of life. However much you may collect, your collection will always be incomplete.
The 2nd skin: You wish that you are simply taken along, that, for once, you do not have to decide where the journey should go.
The 3rd skin: You will be glad that not all your wishes are fulfilled, not even on your travels.
The 4th skin: On every journey you will discover things on your person that will disturb you. (You will then wish for more philosophical depth than for superficial angst.)
The 5th skin: You will learn once more that every journey is more a beginning then an end. And you will be happy that the beginnings still work successfully for you, sometimes quite definitely.
The 6th skin: You will look for new means and methods in order to travel through the world. And you will have to decide what that really means for you: locomotion.
The 7th skin: You will notice that sometimes it is merely a single alphabet that makes the whole difference. And you will therefore ask yourself whether, in the final analysis, you are more than a not-always-consistent metaphor yourself.
The 8th skin: You will learn to love the little miracles, even when they basically do nothing for you.
The 9th skin: You will realise that the skin is no container, no sack for a substance, but the substance itself. Und you will experience that it is sometimes of no use to just roll up the legs of your trousers.
The 10th skin: In your heart of hearts you will confront the truth. Which journey should be your journey? You cannot possibly know the outcome of the journey. But you know one thing for sure: every onion has ten skins (and under every skin is concealed a truth).
First Publication: 5-2011
Modifications: 17-2-2012, 20-6-2013