#2. ENTRANCE (2).
2.1 By entering the cave the Speleologist inseminates the chthonic world.
2.11 Insemination is what always happens when modesty is pierced.
2.12 Whatever form the insemination takes, and what happens in the cave, are decided by the Question the Speleologist brings with him.
2.121 The man who enters the cave always carries a Question with him.
2.122 The cave, in this sense, is always the interrogation of an oracle. And oracles always give a Response. Every single entrance of every single Speleologist is ruled by rituals that in return lead to a Response to their Question.
2.123 Questions are mostly implicit, unspoken. And they’re defined at the exit, in front of the Response.
2.13 Each cave would give a different Response to the same Question, just as Orpheus’ oracle in Lesbos compared to Delphi’s Pythia or Dodoni. But even the same cave in two different moments would give different Responses. Here we need to shed light on a decisive detail. Related to human perception of time, the cave is an immutable entity. Except for disruptive events, such as earthquakes or collapses, in the course of life Humans can only grasp the irrelevant changes, the little things, as long as they do the very rare action of visiting the same cave again after some time. However, the cave never ceases to move, even when its geological phenomena are interrupted. The incessant mutation of the chthonic world does not speak an alphabet detectable by human senses but is rather a matter of thought, whose investigation dates back the phenomenology of wells and meanders along a path of tens of millions of years. In this apparent stillness, however, one can see a very pure and dizzying fact: if, entering the same cave for the second time, the Speleologist is surprised to see it different, this is not because it has changed its features; rather, it is different the person who entered the cave.
2.14 Caves, museums, and libraries measure the variance of human beings over time.
2.2 Several are the types of chthonic entrances. It is not so much worth underlining the taxonomy, as well as the relationship between the prevailing narrowness of the entrance and the immensities that can be encountered inside, when, unexpectedly, a vault reveals itself that even the most powerful torch fails to fully grab.
2.3 The Speleologist is never a loner. He always enters the cave at least in pairs. The sociability and the camaraderie often seizing them lighten the matter of fact that those who entered the cave alone and got hurt almost certainly would not escape.
2.4 Janus is the god of beginnings, material and immaterial, one of the oldest and most important divinities of Roman, Latin, and Italic religion.
2.41 He is depicted with two faces, one opposite the other (Ianus Bifrons, the Two-faced Janus), because it is a power of the god to look at both the future and the past but also because, being the god of the door, of the entrance, of the transition, he can both look inside and outside. He gives the name to January, for example. He gave the name to doors, ianuae, to passages, iani, and to the porters, ianitores, from which the Italian term for parent, genitore, derives: the one who lets a child into the world.
2.42 According to the myths, Janus received from the god Saturn the gift of seeing both the past and the future. The entrance to the cave is located at that exact point: after the past, before the future. It is present, untouched. Just like every moment, it could be said. Here it is important to say that the entrance of the cave is time, not space. And as an instant, it happens where it is impossible to observe it: in the now.
2.421 (Since observation, any observation, literally travels the instant, it passes through it, resulting in no aspect different from any other action.)
2.4211 (This indistinctness sets off, once and for all, axiologically, the defenseless superficiality of the act of observing).
2.5 Every Human who enters the cave is not just a body. He is an object of n dimensions. He carries memories, the people he knows and has known, his unresolved problems, life in its becoming: past and future. Studies. The games he played when he was a child.
2.51 With a limitation.
2.52 Entering the cave, each being reveals itself in its complete volume, in the encumbrance given by the sum of body, thoughts and experiences. How does all that load made of life fit in, in such narrow spaces?
2.53 As a matter of fact, the most remains outside. If so, what is the law that defines what is allowed to enter and what must be left on the surface?
2.53 There is no law. Once inside, the Speleologist perceives what he’s carrying with him. During the pauses, along the walkways, even hanged in the middle of a well, the images still attached to him emerge by irrational associations. Faces, architectures, regrets.
2.54 Meanwhile, the precise moment when the surface gives way to Cthonie, the body breaks free from many things. It lets them out. The Speleologist seems to be able to see them, to understand them with a single glance as a multidimensional cube of thoughts, problems, memories, bonds that will not have citizenship inside and from which the body agrees to detach for a while. Aware that in the meantime, while he is in the cave, in his absence, they will change, leave, become subdued or exacerbate like poorly trained horses. When it happens that the Speleologist calls back inside what he’s left out, he performs an impious act that puts him in danger, and then the only thing he has to do is drive them back. Man can become, even for a partial time, part of the cave only if what he’s left outside remains outside, and what he’s brought inside is tamed. If that balance is affected, even breathing becomes difficult.
(…)
