close

A*DESK has been offering since 2002 contents about criticism and contemporary art. A*DESK has become consolidated thanks to all those who have believed in the project, all those who have followed us, debating, participating and collaborating. Many people have collaborated with A*DESK, and continue to do so. Their efforts, knowledge and belief in the project are what make it grow internationally. At A*DESK we have also generated work for over one hundred professionals in culture, from small collaborations with reviews and classes, to more prolonged and intense collaborations.

At A*DESK we believe in the need for free and universal access to culture and knowledge. We want to carry on being independent, remaining open to more ideas and opinions. If you believe in A*DESK, we need your backing to be able to continue. You can now participate in the project by supporting it. You can choose how much you want to contribute to the project.

You can decide how much you want to bring to the project.

Spotlight

23 October 2025

Awareness Flotilla

Let’s imagine that a person’s name or their birthplace could not turn them down when they arrive in another land in need of help. Let’s be even bolder: let’s imagine the arms were opened before, long before, logic clouded over by classifying people by their names and origins. In front of us there is a person asking for help, and that is everything that matters. If our current mindset is wary of such creative audacity, maybe it is time to go back to a story told and written in a language that many would mark out as “dead” and that yet keeps alive those values that are so often on the verge of dying in our modern societies. Homer’s Odyssey, which lives on under multiple appearances in the collective subconscious, should have also woven in our imaginations, with unbreakable thread, the value of hospitality. It is because the Odyssey dares to lavish a foreigner before even asking about their name and land.

“Fall to, and welcome; when you have done supper I shall ask who you are”. This is how the king of Sparta, Menelaus, addresses two strangers whom he has taken in without knowing their identities. When one of his royal servants suggests throwing them out and sending them out somewhere else, Menelaus shows his fortitude by reminding him that “you and I have stayed often enough at other people’s houses before we got back here”. Likewise, when Odysseus shipwrecks on the shore of a faraway island and is found in the bushes by the princess Nausicaa, the young girl, fearless of his appearance and unaware of his identity, calls to her companions: “Why do you run? Can you not see this man is not an enemy, for this is just a man who has lost his way, and we must take care of him.” And it is in this way that the shipwrecked man is welcomed with all the honors by the inhabitants of that island, among exquisite food, robes, warm baths, gifts, sports games, dances and a flotilla that will take him back to his homeland, without anyone knowing yet what that land is or how far it is, because nobody still knows the name of the stranger: it will be only his longing, after hearing a story sung to the sound of a zither, that will encourage him to tell before everyone else his own odyssey. So was said by the king of that island, Alcinous: “Anyone with even a moderate amount of right feeling knows that he ought to treat a guest and a suppliant as though he were his own brother.”

Do we still have a moderate amount of “right feelings”? The acts of generosity and hospitality scattered in the Odyssey dare to question the strongly established notion of the linear progress of History. Those acts are stars that, from the early beginnings of our cultural tradition and through the light and acoustic pollution of our nights, flicker in the sky today: they flicker as a forgotten constellation that has not stopped warning our modernity that its conceited and hasty technological advances work against its ethical progress. This way, that constellation of human values remains as a guide for those sailors who still look up to it. There are those who, from their innermost voices, stir up the fire of those stars daily and one day gather some boats and set sail to the sea. It is through this way that hospitality travels in those boats;  that all the supplies Odysseus received on earth are now being carried through the sea; that the crew that went with Odysseus back to Ithaca, who volunteered to do it without knowing any names, today escorts the value of hospitality: a now shipwrecked value in all shores, a stranger in all lands not to be taken care of, but to take care, to fully devote itself after wandering around; a value that walks between borders as if they were a tightrope; a value, hospitality, with no solid ground to call home that still finds its shore, its land, its home and its strength in international waters, in every boat, in every crew member, in every single one of the languages in which, between the keeling over among the waters, takes a stand and announces the challenge and the undeniable commitment of ‘hospitality’. In old Greek, there is a bond that ties the words ‘ship’ (ναύς [naus]) and ‘thought’ (νοῦς [nus]), because ships can be “as light as wings or thoughts”; that is what a young girl told the shipwrecked Odysseus. Today I am astonished at realizing that this picture created by the ancient speakers of the Greek language is shining again through the Freedom Flotilla: aboard those ships our thoughts and conscience as a civilization ride the waves, multilingual. If in the first steps of our History we set sail with ships and words and started shaping this civilization, now, in a moment of unacceptable impunity and abuse of human dignity, we go back to the waves; we go back to the old sea, the deep currents. Now, civilization is our awareness, conscience and thoughts (νοῦς [nus]) aboard ships (ναύς [naus]) on the way to Gaza.

 

[Featured Image: Part of “Flotilla Fresco” from Akrotiri (Santorini Island, Greece), circa 2nd millennium B.C.]

Marina Eiriz Zarazaga (Sanlúcar de Barrameda, 2002) is a reader who asks for half a loaf of bread and a book. To sharpen her awareness, she strives daily to write, evoking, connecting, and reworking poetic images from Greco-Roman culture, which she sees not as a legacy of the past, but, above all, as a challenge of creativity, sensitivity, and ethics for those of us who live today. She holds degrees in Classical Philology and Linguistics from the University of Cádiz, and a degree in Professional Music Teaching, specializing in Violin. She is currently amazed by the fields of critical philosophy and the classical tradition of ideas about language. She is convinced that if something is difficult, that is all the more reason to try.

Media Partners:

close
close
"A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world" (John Le Carré)