The walled city, the hill and the rocks
Alongside our life, every one of us carries one or more rocks to the top of a Hill around which we were born. Once, there were gorgeous forests and one could climb any tree in order to see in the distance dangers and opportunities and there also were clean water creeks and the forest was sold on nothing as timber and now we are blown by the winds and rains and buried by the landslips and water is imported because ours was poisoned and dried by those who searched the Hill looking for imaginary treasures.
There are plenty who reach the top of the Hill and let the rock slide on the other side of the crest (they probably think they are young and strong and there is still time for them to carry other rocks or no one explained to them that their rocks are valuable only because they reached the top!) or they sit on it and proclaim themselves kings on their rocks or they bury them in order to over sell them.
Once and a while there are rocks negotiators coming in their outfits. They’ve got the money, a pale smile and the bag at sight and they allure you with sweet talk with a foreign accent to give them your rocks for some papers with strange symbols and after you do it, they convince you to put the rocks on their name, which are theirs and no one must know they were once yours! And then, they push you to carry another rocks and to sell them too, as long as you live, and with their papers, that blacken and diminish with time, your children and grand-sons- who will want to live other than out in the open air- to pay a part from the advance, the interest and rates of your loans, to buy from them your stones, which will then worth their weight in gold…
We wanted to do from these stones a Walled City on the top of that Hill that is ours from our ancestors and of which we do not know much. Some carry marble blocks, others some simple river stones or ballast, dye, cement, sand sacks or water buckets and tool kits.
Each as a part has an intrinsic value, together they will be priceless and the City will serve all without any distinction, in war and at peace and will send a message to other Cities, bigger or smaller, that there are people who own the Hill!
Bogdan Condurateanu
Project Manager – Digital Romania Project
