My strange friend
One of my favorite books at that time was “2001 Space Odyssey” by Arthur Clarke. We had watched the movie before so it was interesting to read the full story. But I was also very interested in painting and drawing like I said.
I got to know an artist at that time. He as a young man and his parents were rich farmers. So he could spend his time painting and dreaming about an exhibit in the Louvre of Paris! When I first met him he was in his small room in the guest-house across the street. He was the real bohemian but kind of lonely at that time. he could come from Rio de Janeiro for the week-end and stay locked in his room painting.
I knew at that time what looked like a good painting so I could see that he could not paint. His paintings were too naïve in a sense but I guess he cold make an exhibit if he was lucky enough – especially if he had the right relationships. He liked the blue color. But the deep blue was his favorite. So he used a lot of blues in his oil paintings. I remember that he encouraged me to paint in the first place. He got me a canvas and brushes and let me try his oil tubes.
Later a man bought my first painting. It was a peacock. I got kind of shocked because I wasn’t sure if the buyer would really like it. But I remember that at that first day he explained me his ideas and what his paintings meant. He had a lava lamp in a corner and it was always on – even when he wasn’t there.
Everybody considered him an eccentric being. He used to come to our house and go directly to the kitchen without being invited to come in. he would put some small breads in the oven and make a coffee for himself and for my brother and me. He was bringing everything needed for the breakfast – he was always coming in the morning. And he used to bring some marmalade and other specialties from his farm. The first thing he said as a salute was: “Tudo azul?” – meaning “is everything blue?” like asking if everything was all right. That was nice from him – but my father always felt kind of annoyed about this intrusion. Our door was always unlocked and in fact, it was most of the time wide open. In the heat of the summer we didn’t have air conditioned at those times. I think it was him who introduced the habit in us to drink black tea.
This guy had a very strange destiny. By the way, is name was Sergio. He was handsome but I think he was a gay. Sometimes he seemed like lost in a kind of hallucination or better, a fixed idea. He was always inviting me to dive at a special beach were he was sure he could spot some awesome big fishes called “budiao azul”. They are similar to the Napoleon fish. They are deep blue – so I think that was the origin of this fix idea. They aren’t common in that coast but he was obsessed about fishing one. So we went with our spear guns off the beach and he was always in front of me but we couldn’t find them.
Much later someone told us that he had committed suicide (or that someone pushed him down the building where he lived in Rio de Janeiro). The case is that he was believed to consume drugs. He used to make parties and surely the drug was present then.
But around 1976-77 he was a positive and happy guy. He had a very good car for the time. And the other story I know about him was of that period. He used to dive together with my father and his partner. Well, he was just going together in the boat but he wasn’t really fishing. He was a passenger. Once they drop the anchor in the middle of the sea, between two islands. There was a diving spot deep down in the bottom of the sea. He couldn’t dive there without the compressed air, and because he had just the snorkel, he had the crazy idea to swim from the boat to the distant island. It was several miles away but in his mind it was inside reach.
So while my father and his partner were diving he jumped in the water and started to swim with his fins and at the same time he was counting each stroke he gave. He figured that he would count the strokes in the trip of return to the boat so that he would know where the boat is!
That was very silly of him because he must have got exhausted before he could reach the island. The case is that he did reach the island! He was found the next day by a fisherman that was passing along the island in his boat. He was waiting in the rocks.
But before that he provoked a huge turmoil in the village. Everybody was looking for him at the sea and they were expecting to find the body floating somewhere. Naturally my father got very mad at him but he seemed unconscious of that problem. I imagine his despair when he returned to the boat and didn’t find him aboard.
The beginning
I remember well the moment when we arrived to Buzios the first time. We were living in Rio de Janeiro at that time and we went to spend a weekend there. We took a van and we were my father, my brother and I. After 3 hours or so we found the place. The dirt road was the only one connecting the beach to the rest of the world. Before we could reach the village we found a little hut where we stopped to ask for directions.
The old man there told us that we were very close to Buzios and then after a question from my father he gave advice about the best beaches in the vicinity. They were all secluded places; very few people outside the village would know about their existence. And the names of those beaches were strange: Seagull’s beach, Turtle beach, Little Lagoon and Horseshoe. The old man was selling fruits in the little hut. We bought bananas. That was a different kind of bananas. They tasted a bit harsh but it was okay. I think the vendor was a nice man. He was ingenuous in the sense that he was still untouched by civilization. He had the old kind of thinking. Not in terms of gain and loss.
Our idea was to camping at the beach so we headed for them. We found a very nice one (the Horseshoe). It was a very closed bay (therefore that name). The hills were covered with short bushes and trees. We spent two nights there. The first morning we found black birds around the van. They were eating the garbage we left outside the car the night before. But soon they left.
The whole place was deserted but in the following years the whole area would see raising numbers of tourists and the first houses would be built around the beaches. You could find great variety in butterflies, hummingbirds, flowers and of course fishes and shells. We came back to Rio de Janeiro but we would return some time later to stay living there. That was the beginning.
I remember the first day when my brother and me came from far away to stay in Buzios. My father had come there before and rented a house.
We entered the room and the strong scent of the pineapples invaded our noses. The pineapples were so strong at that time… They had a sweet smell – so sweet that it was unbearable to stay close by. They were juicy. There was a straw hat hanging from a nail at the wall. I realized that I was in a tropical country. That was so different from the place I was coming from…
I felt excited about that place. Everything was new – even the language. The palm trees and the coconuts… The blue ocean… I picture it like a paradise still untouched. Even the inhabitants had a different view of life. They denied the news about the Man reaching the moon. They didn’t have much contact with the news from the world outside anyway… There was the church and its authority…
About he first landlords we had… We rented their house few steps away from the main beach. They were an old couple. They didn’t go out from their house a lot. We could not see them all the time.
The man had been a fisherman all his life – just like his neighbors. They were telling us tales of the times when the fishes used to come in schools right to the bay in front of their houses and then it was so simple to fish to feed their families. The fishing was by net and a few fishermen rowing their boats could release the nets and round up the fishes. The tuna fish was abundant. The dolphins would bring them up like tamed dogs.
We didn’t have to see those times. But we saw them fishing at the beach even if the product of their work wasn’t so abundant like in former times. My father had a different skill so he started to fish by spear gun from the first time on. We followed his practice and used to dive for fun using mask, snorkel and fins. We used to dive in front of our house between the anchored boats and around the little island few fins strokes away. The sea was always calm there. But in the afternoon the Northeast wind would blow. And sometimes very hard… I could find octopus, living shells and some small fishes. The seabed wasn’t what it used to be in the past. But as nobody dived there I could still find some joy.
Shell collectors
I loved to collect shells. I had that habit since the first years of my life. My mother used to go with me to the coast and dig and search for shells along the beach and between the rocks. The first years I was living in a rather cold country. But in Brazil I could expect to find much more interesting shells.
I remember that around 1977 my father bought a National Geographic Magazine. In it you could find an article about the future of the exploration of the space. It had very nice paintings showing how the scientists expected to be the future – with lunar bases and space stations. You could see thousands of astronauts “flying” in the open space with their rocket backpacks… A lunar base surrounded by rovers rolling with gigantic wheels. Spaceships of different shapes – some of them aerodynamic like the space shuttle and some not so much.
I used to watch it and as usual I got lost in my dreams, expecting that one day in the far future I would be able to see it with my own eyes, perhaps I would be myself exploring the moon. I had the strong wish to be flying somewhere between the planets and the stars. I guess I was watching too many sci-fi when I was a very young kid. At the beginning there were the space-operas. They were ridiculous and also delicious. So for me it was mandatory that the element “space” would be included in the future of the planet. And I would live to see it of course.
There was another article in the same issue… And it was about shells. About collecting and finding shells at the beach. It was a rather romantic and poetic article. Nothing particularly informative. The author wrote about the act of walking along the shore and finding a rare treasure left there by the sea…
Well that I understood very well… For any reason it wasn’t appealing to me at that time. Just that now I think back at it and then I get the same nostalgic feeling. As if I was reaching an area of my brain that is fed by memories. It’s hungry for memories. Such a poetic feeling brings me back a feeling but that feeling doesn’t fully develop in my brain. It’s rather in a kind of limbo – half-born. Maybe I’m trying to block it in my consciousness.
I know what the poem is about: it’s about walking at the beach and finding a big shell close to the waves. It’s still wet and fresh… I take it in my hands but I know that it’s dead. It’s just a husk. Some day it was inhabited by a living thing. It died and left that shell behind like a present to the ocean. Like a present to me.
I know it’s no more there. I am holding a skeleton in my hand and yet it’s so attractive… It’s full of colors and the shape is delicate. Like a jewel made by the artisan. I feel sad then. It’s not the case to admire it. Not anymore. I couldn’t feel happy and rejoice by the found. I know now that a creature had to die for me to be able to own a piece for my collection. Where is the reward?
The skeleton is cold and wet. It still shows a vivid color and the surface is shining. Yet it’s dead and if had stayed in the seabed it would roll and roll and over time it will wear out and the calcium would get ugly, white like a bone. I get the feeling of a timeless eternity that rolls on and wears out my dreams. My existence is wasted like the shell. The ocean is the eternity and my shell is facing that reality. The waves will roll over me and the years will come and go. So I’ll be left alone in the seabed accompanied by all the other shells more or less wasted than myself. I’ll look at them and I’ll realize that I’m just bones left behind. I’m like them so that I can see myself in them.
That’s the nature of our ego. The ego is this reality – the shell that doesn’t realize its own nature. The nature of what has to perish. It’s a shell left behind at the beach. Someone could find it and take it home. Luckily he would end up in the company of its fellow shells – all the other unlucky shells that were found by a crazy old man with long white beard and a captain cap in his head. He would turn them around in his hands (his bone-and-skin hands) and would study them with a magnifying glass and read their grooves and strange marks in the surface and he would be able to tell their names by the shape and by reading the thin letters like Arab alphabet.
So I realize my nature – my true nature as an ego. I don’t talk about the soul. The soul should be something eternal. But I know that my ego is anchored in time. It’s counting the hours and it’s part of this material world.
Now I know why it’s so strange to remember that part of the magazine. The shells have a funny profound meaning. I’m sure that a psychologist would have something to say about that… After all they study the meaning of the messages in our dreams. And every object has a meaning. I don’t know who that old man is. He could be an old inhabitant of the coast. Maybe he’s a castaway in an island – just like Robinson Crusoe. The case is that he’s totally inconspicuous and forgotten to civilization. He has even forgotten his own past. Maybe he never had one. Maybe his mother left him to die and (miraculously) he survived among the wolves eating shells and mushrooms.
That old man has an ancient miracle in his bare hands. Those hands show the results of time and you can sense it in the skin. It’s wrinkled and grooved and the veins appear all over the back of the hand. The veins are like roads or tunnels behind the thin skin. And the animals crawl along the paths. Animals such as ants and mice. I can see the bones protruding through it. They are like knots or little skulls – shinning skulls of lost ghosts.
He’s never going to die. That’s what he thinks. And meanwhile his fate isn’t done yet. The dice is in the cup. He leaves the sand-corns run through his fingers. The wind takes the sand away and he knows the sand would never return to the palm of his hand.
He has to swallow his pride. He never knows any thing. He’s not even there… He’s a ghost. His shadow fades away… the sun comes down. I can see it in the picture of that article. The sun is almost under the sea-line and the clouds show their reddish colors. A chilling wind blows through the cliffs. Those cliffs are hardened by the ages. And there are rocks scattered around. The piece of beach is very flat and wet. There’s the old man and in front of him there’s that wonderful shell. It’s big and rounded. It doesn’t belong there. It could be crawling in the bottom of the sea, fresh and alive. The creature that crafted it is no more. Nobody knows why it died. Maybe it was eaten by another creature – and that would be a natural incident. Natural life is like that. So nothing disturbs the natural course of life.
We prefer to believe that a fish ate it. We don’t think it was murdered by men. So there was no curse in the story. We wouldn’t feel so sorry for it because it served the cause of Nature itself. Everybody has to live and some creatures must predate others to survive. But we don’t think about this anyway. We only focus our attention in one thing: that beautiful shape – and we feel that it’s not very usual for us to find a beautiful thing laying there to be picked up. And the present was given by Nature itself.
Is it a present? Yes, we think so. That image remains in my mind… I watch the landscape and the darkened cliffs in the sunset. The man standing there as if he was always there… That sense of eternity comes back to me. It was a sunset like any other. You can say it was the same sunset and that it remained there for eternity. No difference from sunset to sunset. The man is an accident in the landscape. A passing shadow… But the shadows in the sand are there for eternity. I don’t know how you feel about it. There’s only one thing. You came and you remained there in that landscape and nobody knew you. Nobody would see you. Just me. I noticed you in the distance. And of course nobody could reach you. You were old and white like a bone. The shell would remain there for eternity if you didn’t pick it up. And if you did pick it up then you could hear the wind in its chamber. We could try to hear the tales from the sea.
It’s like when I was younger and I heard my grandmother tell me fairy tales. The things she used to tell me were not told by her mouth. Instead, I heard her hands. I watched her ancient hands holding me and moving nervously and the blue veins were telling me about ancient paths.
The wind is blowing from inside the shell. It’s telling us his tales of the ocean. Poetry is like that. We don’t care about the words. There’s a strange magic in the act and that’s what matters. You were a stranger at the beach. No name and no questions. Or better, the questions were there buy the wind was coming with an ancient answer. Nobody could understand the code so it remained a secret. The shell could make an echo. The answer was in that echo. But the language was lost in the past – an unreachable past – so you gave up and remained staring at the sky following the seagulls in their acrobatic flight.
The secret is being told all the time by the wind. But we get used to it and don’t want to hear it anymore.
Looking at that article I pictured myself at the beach in Buzios. The sense of loneliness was present there. In a way I was at an immemorial beach and the Earth didn’t register any memory about me passing there. As a ghost in a strange place my feet didn’t leave any tread in the sand.
I was always alone when I had to feel something more deeply. It’s as if I couldn’t feel anything special by being together with people. Maybe the human race didn’t appear in the Earth yet. It wasn’t born yet, so the time didn’t count.
There I was in front of the ocean. And the ocean was looking at me. Bringing me the air that I could breath. The air that comes from the ocean has always a different quality. It’s wet and salty. It’s rather cool. It’s wild as it never saw the human presence. And I like it that way. It’s wild and it will never be tamed by us.
So we don’t believe in sea beast anymore. But we rejoice in believing in some kind of castaway race of humans. Those beings would be somewhere lost in the distant shore of an unexplored island outside the maps. I could be one of them. I would never know about civilization. I could only pick up the utensils I find in the beach after a storm.
This is like the shells that appear after a strong sea storm. They are new and untouched by man. So I could only imagine the use for those utensils. I could never guess right – I could never know what is the use for a telephone. I could think of a ritual use.
I picked up the shell and threw it back to the sea. Is this poetic feeling something real? Or is it the invention of a lazy mind? Maybe it’s only in the imagination of artistic people… What’s the use of it? Is it just a thought?
Perhaps it is not something so shallow. It could be a reflection of something deeper in our nature. It could be the external manifestation of a deep nature. It could be that this nature is inherent to the world and that it’s not a creation of mankind. It can be that it wasn’t created by the civilized man – neither by the primitive man. It could be something that goes beyond our consciousness. The poetic feeling wasn’t created in our mind. We are born with this sensitivity. And I believe that we feel it because there’s a moment when we get in touch with something bigger than us. And we don’t know how to cope with it. We get silent then. And we feel the magic of the moment. Then later we give it a name and we try to convey the feeling using words. But these words never meet the objective and so we tend to wander from one object to the other and we never explain the experience.
Now I meet what I was saying before about the shells and the experience at the beach. What the shell whispered in our ears was a tale of eternity. We can get the feeling for it but we could never explain it even to ourselves. We could justify our feelings and try to bring them to the “sunny” side of consciousness (that’s to say – the intellectual side of the brain). But something gets lost in the translation… The original sensation; that magical moment would never be captured in our brain. It’s timeless – and our brain thinks in terms of time.
