Harmony
October 17, 2023
Mood: Sunset - Jeff van Dyck (Unpacking OST)
I'm doing a little better than when I wrote my last post on this blog. I'm detaching from the girl I love a month into no contact and no longer am fighting urges to unblock her. I'm feeling lighter, and my skin is clearer, save for the hormonal zits popping up on the lower half of my face, but even those aren't too bad, I just cleanse, do my routine as usual. I think ultimately it's best for me to stay away, at least for a while. I'll unblock at some point, but only when I feel strong enough to face her and not get sucked back into it in case she tries to make her way back, which I wouldn't be surprised if it happened. Still, I have no plans to visit Almaty again, or it would take me a veeeeeery great amount of effort or a big reason to go there. Next time into Kazakhstan, whenever this will be, I'll stick to my western part, to Uralsk, to Atyrau, to Aktobe. I'll miss the tasty food from that Altyn Altai restaurant that I loved to order from though, and the mountains, and the First President's Park, where I was supposed to meet up with her but I had insisted on going to the Botanical Garden... oh, it would've been more beautiful to go there with her. Let's just not get caught up in the what ifs, it's going to send me back into sadness.
The boat's owner appears to be here again at least semi-regularly: the energy around her feels different, flows instead of stagnating, and she seems happy, if one can conceive that a boat can feel happy, but the "heavy" energy that would stay with me for a long time whenever I'd give a pat on her stern is no longer there. Things have moved inside several times, although kind of discreetly (I only figured out it wasn't my imagination after I dug up a picture I had taken as a reference for my novel which showed the visible part of the inside) and it appears the table is getting waxed. I wonder if he's living aboard again, and who he's truly like as a person. After all, I only know him from the mail that was left at the captaincy (which is, some of his tastes), the things that I deduced during my little time of sleuthing, and as the guy who pulled a years-long disappearing act on the administration and left his boat behind, and what I was told about him by the British couple who are kinda the "elders" of this port, having been there for a good twelve years now, and who had become acquainted with him.
His mystery and the mystery surrounding this boat I grew fond of is what gave birth to my novel, even though it's probably going to take a different route than intended, and if the energy I feel from the boat is actually his (and not the boat herself, no matter how animistic I can get about certain things, there's still a possibility she may just be a proxy of sorts), then that would mean this dude I don't even know and may never know is the catalyst for the adventure I've embarked on the minute I chose to write this book and look again at Portugal, choosing to get to know it instead of remaining in that state of childhood dislike. He may never even know he's indirectly inspired a young writer to go on this journey. Let's just hope this niceness (I have heard about) doesn't hide a dangerous criminal... it'd be even more ironic to be murdered in this situation. Inside the boat. Lol.
It's interesting how things work in the big picture. Would I have done this had I not worked at that port, or even, this goes back even further: if he hadn't bought the boat, moored her here, went MIA, then I came to work and discovered the boat, would all of this have happened? It was probably unplanned, certainly for me it was, but such circumstances fill me with wonder. My mother told me about a couple she basically set up back in the day: a friend of hers, who she worked with, and the sister of the guy who was married to the French lady who seeded the dislike for Portugal in me at the tender age of four. She basically introduced the sister to her friend, they went on a date, and now they've been married for a good 20 years with three kids. But hadn't she come to work at this place, met this guy, befriended him, hadn't my dad met his best friend at the regiment, guy whose sister happened to be single then, would've everything turned out this way? Would they be happily married with children?
Likewise, I'm thinking of a girl who indirectly inspired me to play the dombra back in the day: someone I have never met in my life, that I know nothing about except her name, village, date of birth and the fact she has a big family and plays the dombra, who might've been the worst asshole ever created (who knows?), but hadn't her relatives decided to record her and her twin sister singing and playing on the dombra, would I have even discovered it and fell in love with it? Hadn't she died in a hit-and-run accident years before I stumbled across the video, would've I been so emotionally moved by the news as to write my very first short story in Russian, which features a cat and a ghost girl who died the same way and sends the cat to give flowers to her grieving sister? Such harmony. A beautifully woven tapestry. I've got kind of a head cold at the moment, but this is comforting to think about. All of these harmonious situations... I love harmony, I love it when I can see an underlying structure.
Have I ever, myself, inspired someone this way? I may never know. Maybe we all do this to some extent. Perhaps one day I'll be the reason, or like in this case indirect reason someone writes a novel or creates a piece of art. If I do learn that I have such a function, I'd be very curious to meet that hypothetical person and read what they are writing.
But yeah, at least for this boat, I'm happy she's at least being somewhat taken care of again. Still hobo-dirty on the outside though. I don't have to give her pats as to stimulate whatever's dwelling inside. Who knows, maybe before I came, this boat was just a boat with no actual personality, but I then was the one to infuse life into her. I should explore such things in my novel. I'm already exploring the idea that some boat spirits want to become human and might be able to, or that they're actually human souls that are "living" as boats to, maybe, resolve some sort of unfinished business.
Back to my journey, I recently listened to a past broadcast of a bilingual French-Portuguese radio that happens to be from the city I used to live in, a dozen or so kilometers away from my home. I discovered a few tracks I really love, including yet another one by Amália Rodrigues (I swear this lady's invading my music folder even when I'm not looking for her, about half of the tracks I discover and like happen to have been sung by her). It's odd, but I'm not feeling the "rush" that I felt with Kazakhstan, or with other ones in the past, even Japan, even Sri Lanka or India back in the day. I'm pleased, curious, very curious even, but not overexcited about Portugal, either.
I almost cried yesterday listening to that broadcast, because I'm not used to feel so calm about something I'm interested in or to not have it completely consume me somehow. It didn't even feel bad per se, just quite disconcerting and uneasy, like I'm not "that passionate" about it, but ultimately, isn't it a sign of a healthier rapport this time? Is it simply because I have a different story with it and am approaching it in a completely new way? Those things aren't limited to human relationships, I feel; I'm pretty sure they can also apply to concepts, to cultures, to various things that we form an attachment to.
I'm also not rushing to get there, although here and there thoughts of taking the car and driving all the way there (which is entirely possible! if I get that driving license and a whole lead of gas money...) pop into my mind and fill me with curiosity rather than an insatiable and precipitated desire to leave everything behind and disappear, never to be found again. I also don't feel like choosing a name that could make it "easier to integrate" there. Maybe because it's close enough to where I'm from, and that my priority isn't really moving there, just kind of exploring it and revitalizing the seeds that were sadly ruined by my early experiences. I still dislike my birth name and feel uneasy with it, but for once, I'm not feeling like entirely changing myself from top to bottom... not like crafting myself an entire new personality and identity. Because yes, let's come clean, I entirely did that with Kazakhstan, and attempted to do it with Japan and Lanka. It's like with every new interest I would get an identity change though my character traits pretty much remain the same.
I'll get to my name in a future post. This one was supposed to be about names, but I guess I had to first give some news and update on my broken spirit that appears to get a little better, albeit gradually. I'm still jobless, but have sent a few cover letters and an administrative job might open up for me, who knows. In the meantime, I'm walking somebody's dog, and it's quite therapeutic to do so. The dog in question is a real delight to be with, even if I'm more of a cat person, and seems to have taken quite the liking to me.