The stars seen from Almograve beach were so close that it was possible to touch them. The sea at night ... the sea at night is a thought that no one ever take into consideration. Only fishermen do, who under that sea and under those same stars live. Only them that, perhaps, of that ocean and those nights are tired.
Ricardo explained to me how to get oriented to North following the stars.It is essential to identify the Polar Star. In order to locate it we use the Ursa Major constellation, which has a similar shape to Ursa Minor one, but it's bigger and brighter and therefore more visible. If you measure the length of the two stars to the base car segment 5 times the distance between them, you will reach the Pole Star. My friends seemed to be overwhelmed by the voice of the ocean, but they were not. Their voices weren’t overwhelmed, they were there; I could hear them. To be overwhelmed was in fact my soul…but why? Inundated… by what? What was that? What was that needing to get lost in the immense strength of the Atlantic? I do not know. I'm not using random words.
That's exactly what I felt:The need to get lost in the immense strength of the Atlantic.
And I thought of Santiago, the old fisherman of "The Old Man and the Sea." In those stars, in that sand and in the breeze, I felt something big that I could not understand ... that ... damn, I could not even guess, something that I could not grab with hands or thoughts or my soul. I want to perceive it! I would stay under those Almograve’s stars for 10 years if necessary, to see if I can understand, if I’m able at least to guess the endless ocean. I don’t know. I can’t find the right words. How can fear, dismay, happiness, fulfillment and sorrow get combined into one single emotion making us feel at one with the entire universe? I do not know.
I would explain that, if I could, but I can’t.
But it was beautiful, beautiful till crying to joy. Sometimes we feel so strong, so intense emotions, that we become unable to find the right words to express them. Brief chat with David, next to a fire on the beach, unable to let its light shine. The mechanism is, in fact, simple but as often happens, is a genius to bring it to light first.According to Goleman, in fact, the reason why sometimes we are " unable to find the right words” is that emotions are mapped into the child's mind before language is coded. As a result, when we live some of the most deep, more intrinsic emotions ...already mapped in our mind when language hasn’t been coded yet, lacking the ability to associate emotional states and words (which have been mapped later) we experience that condition of being “unable to find the right words”.
And you think...
You think and start to realize the confusing problem of using your own experience.
Think that you would like to leave everything, once again, and travel trough Latin America.
Why Latin America? I do not know, doesn’t matter why. You simply would like to get on a 72 Gran Torino and… down and down from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, and see if you can find those stars, that ocean and nights there too. And I thought about everything and nothing. I wondered if I will never find again people like the ones of my group, talented of inventing, in two hours, a fantasy with range of the "Almograve stars." I wondered if I will never see again David, Ricardo, Astrid, Alain and Itziar eyes wide-open in the same darkness, and listening in the meantime, their laughter, that laughter clean, complete, almost remorseless or without regret.
It was all this and more our weekend in the Alentejo. Moments making you feel the desire to live blowing up, but you cannot explain why. Moments, when you think for a moment, to have found the secret key of the world. What is left, at the end of the day, if not all of this? The only things that really remain are timeless dreams, hold impressions and the lights in the darkness glimpsed from you, almost asleep in a train.
As I said earlier, however, I am not able to find the right words; this post is just an attempt. At the end of the day, there’s no harm in trying
Thanks guys.
Hi Filippo, thank you for your post but I will not write also the translation of this comment in Spanish lol At a first glance this post seems to be dreamy and poetic, I like it.
ReplyDeleteBrief comment on it: great use of pictures, fantastic attempt in transmitting larger-than-life emotions, pretty successful as far as I am concerned (“timeless dreams” is just WOW, I felt shivering), interesting report of the chat about the difficulty to describe certain emotions. One thing I would have done differently is avoid repeating 4 times you don't have the words to describe your feelings. I got that, but more than twice (one at the beginning and one at the end) is redundant. It makes me think: “stop telling me what you can't tell me, and tell me what you can”. That's from my side. Apart from this detail excellent article.
I had to read it twice to try hard to step into your shoes and feel your feelings and imagine being in such a situation.
I can recollect probably the best night of my life in the sea, I was in Sardinia with friends, the night was lightened up by 3/4 moon, so the moon was the Queen of the night – a bit like Mary Stuart lool – I decided to take a bath, only me, the others (unaccountably!) missed this unique opportunity to enjoy the clear and at the same time dark water and to be only one entity with the sea like you were trying to do, right? I spent 20 minutes swimming and returning to mother Nature and I would have never left that magic environment........probably if I would have stayed forever I would have slowly melted and my cells would have dispersed in the whole Mediterranean Sea... would that be considered dying or just an expansion of myself? Perhaps both.
Anyway when I emerged my best friend Riccardo (don't know why I keep on calling him the “best” friend as he always does naughty things to me lool) stole my towel and I had to run after him...hilarious! (of course not at the time lol).
About the stars, my best night watching at them was with not doubt in the Death Valley close to Las Vegas. I was doing a 3 days trip with 6 polish people (crazy, awkward, messy, funny trip) and we left San Diego to reach several places among which Las Vegas. The Death Valley is a desert surrounding the city of perdition. We stopped the van and pulled over for a quick break when my jaw dropped at looking at the sky. There, shining, were the “biggest” stars I had ever seen in my life. With no light around for many kilometres, the sky felt so … close. We laid down in the middle of the street (!) watching at this tiny part of universe that was so amazing, it was a sensation of being alive and at the same time your breath seemed to stop, the stars closer to you is like feeling the heart pounding faster and stronger. After 15 minutes of utter silence I broke it simulating a fart because I wanted to go and play roulette! 50 bucks on ..RED! ….,....CRAP!!!!!!....looooooooooool
I have to admit that there are more people other than fishermen who like to listen to the sea at nighttime .. till the moment, I thought I am one but finally we are more ... a relief for soul and freedom seekers .. but my very first moment for realising that was in the mediterranean shore; in Alex .. ironically, not in the place that I should've been ... finally, yes .. at a certain moment, those precious few moments when you have the chance to say to yourself : Now, I can go and leave everything behind me and not even to think of anything .. and suddenly, because of random laughter of a friend .. you decide to stay .. only in those moments you should be grateful of how lucky you are!
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