juliana snapper

Back on land. Let’s get back to earth. Before there’s nothing left of it. Before the Flood.

This is the story of a female buffalo and her calf. Her name is Bufala: it’s her first name, i.e. her proper name. And Bufalino is what she properly calls her calf, him and him alone, whom she is able to distinguish from all others.

Bufala despairs along an ancient cobbled road in Campania. Death threatens Bufalino. “Mater orbata”, Bereaved mother. A dreadful sacrifice of a life to a terrible god.

This god is called Capital. Whose name is Capital? He’s the name of anthropocide, biocide, ecocide. Cosmocide? — nobody seems to see why not.

Capital’s father is called Money, whom he loves so frantically that they both slaughter the countless children born of their incestuous rapes.

Are these actually the gods that humans worship?

Lucretius: “Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!” How many disastrous evils has religion been able to uphold!

Religion binds us together with ties that separate and oppress us and eventually aim to kill us.

Let’s untie those bonds.

Let us hear the song of the buffalo female and follow this ancient cobbled road, “questa strada”. This road is “almost nothing”, “quasi niente” (Pasolini): something between being and nothingness.

Let’s follow this poetic road Bufala walks to rescue her calf in the race to nothingness of the capitalocene.

Where does questa strada lead?