We came to the sea carrying stones, red thread and olive branches.
Simple things.
Ancient things.
Things that have accompanied human beings for thousands of years.
For me, a stone is never simply a stone.
When I hold one in my hand, I feel something of the immense passage of time. Stones were here before us. They have witnessed generations arrive and disappear. They carry the memory of footsteps, hands, prayers, grief, celebration, war and reconciliation.
In this ritual, the stones became our ancestors.
We gathered them. We carried them. We placed them together.
As if, for a moment, those who came before us could stand beside us again.
And from among the stones rose the olive branch.
In the ancient Greek world, the olive was more than a tree. Sacred to Athena, it carried associations of wisdom, continuity, protection and peace. Its roots enter deeply into the earth while its branches reach towards the light.
What symbol could we need more today?
We held the olive branches close to our hearts.
We carried them in procession.
We raised them towards the sky.
And eventually, we carried them with us into the sea.
But the ritual was not made only from objects.
The body became the ritual space.
Voice became breath, breath became movement, movement became procession, and procession became ceremony.
We remember together.
And perhaps this is one of the ancient functions of ritual: not to tell us what to believe, but to bring us into an experience through which something already living inside us can be remembered.
Around us, families and children were swimming, fishing, playing and cooling their bodies in the evening water.
Such an ordinary human scene.
And yet, just across the Eastern Mediterranean, other human beings are denied these most elemental possibilities.
And a question arose in me:
Can any human being truly have the right to forbid another human being access to the commons of this planet?
The sea does not know our borders.
The wind does not carry a passport.
The stones do not know our religions.
Perhaps our bodies know something our minds have forgotten.And so we entered the water together, carrying the olive branches. As the sun disappeared behind the mountains, our bodies became silhouettes against the sea. We raised the branches. We breathed. We sang.
And for a little while, our bones could form a bridge.
A bridge between shores.
A bridge between the living and the ancestors.
A bridge between what we have inherited and what we choose to pass on.
A bridge between witnessing and feeling.
A bridge between feeling and action.
A bridge between one human being and another.
How can we remember what it means to be human?
May we continue building bridges.
Between bodies.
Between shores.
Between worlds.
And may we remember that beneath everything that separates us,
we belong to the same Earth.
With love,
Apostolia
I WISH MY BONES COULD FORM A BRIDGE
Sunset Ritual, Karathona Beach, Nafplion
Performance Space Symposium 2026
Co-created by Apostolia Papadamaki & Dorita Hanna
