The unCredo of the unMonastarians
As yet we cannot know, until that time, let us ‘Get Lost’.

Confront your errors face to face
– the sacrèd walls will preserve our sincerity:
Our hard work shall be as legendary as our parties.

It has been stated that feeding the unMonks shall be the key to the survival of our initiative.  But they may eat more than seasonal vegetables.  In practice, in the early days of the unMonastery we were hungry for everything: lacking a heating system we sought human warmth from each other; when a wonky internet provider left us ‘excommunicated‘, we talked our way into deep understanding…

Our project may have a stronger ideological basis than a practical one.  Even if the material resources had been available from the first turn of the keys  (which they most definitely weren’t), most of us are at least 9 months from the rudimentaries of a language in which to navigate our daily life beyond a small circle of new found friends.  In the meantime, I designed a kickstart…Working with young actors, one has a bit of an advantage: they tend to view themselves as young actors.  Working with not so young geeks, social activists, militant anti-consumers and the strategically unemployed, the idea of a psycho-emotional warm-up could have been harder to sell.  

It is best we go gently.  Fortunately the scenery is evocative…
Every morning at the stroke of 0745 on the magnificent terrace overlooking the magnificent sunrise overlooking the magnificent stone formations of the Murgia just across the ravine valley from our perch, we go at it.  The elements are carefully selected from among the following list…

• the west African forearm massage greeting with small talk
• rudimentary qi gong moves from the bear cycle which emphasise the very rocks on which we cling
• instant chi chuan with the seven constituent elements
• isolated Greatest Hits culled from my years of actors training
• a gradually expanding repertoire of all-purpose Italian phrases designed both to align us ideologically within the task we have taken upon ourselves, and to demonstrate this ideology to anyone whom we can cajole into listening to it
• for dessert we round off the day by selecting a random card from Martin Slaatto’s collection of the twenty movements of transport dance which are used to propel us back up the ramparts and in to breakfast.