Feitio rede de palavra - the English words & phrases I battle with in the silence of seashellear purl: knowledge is not wisdom.

In search of the perfect spelling for the sea's endless speeching I travelled through the night. April's full moonlight filtered by the train's passage in a flickering of the beatific face of a child-woman to the accompaniment of a drunken belchfartsnoring Catalan. Morning's firstlight - Portugal's northern border - burst of eucalypt mind's echoes recalled without time for sharp-focus-imaginings. In broken English andPortuguese fragments I bought a coach ticket to a village I did not know - a name driven choice.

         Illslept eyes consumed in swerving view: pine & eucalypt hills,hand hewn granite pillars propping grape-vines, cork & olive trees, copper pots by the roadside, oaks, washing drying in the sun, old men squatting round in the square, names to strain grit full eyes; Castelo Covo, Arao, San Pedro da Torre, Campos, Reboreda, Lovelhe, Vila Nova de Cerveira, the Rio Minho, Loivo, Gondarem, Lanhelas, Seixas, thirsting with greed after every glimpse of the Atlantic, Caminha, Cristelo, Moledo, Vilarinho.

         Obliterated by the staleness of the coach, scents & sounds  assailed the moment I reached Vila Praia de Ancora in the noonheat a rusty pierced fish weathercock, the weatherfish, pointed inland towards the hills and distant mountains, walking tailward I found the boundless Ocean and a muttonfat jade river running into sea, a footbridge spanning its narrow width beyond which lay the sweeping white beach of dunes, and mansion isolated in hazy distance bid I explore its sound.

         Eyewalking the shore: among the dunes; meandering the tide mark; among rocks; wind-blown seaweed, condom wrapper, feather, plastic can, straw, rope with net segment (a tangled mass of frayed knots), sand filled glass bottle, plastic bag, half of a green clothes-peg, twine, shells & segments of shells in the process of becoming sand, suntan lotion tube full of sea water, thong strap, bird bone, bottle cap, margarine tub lid, round light bulb, cuttlefish bone, olive tree flower, fragments of various grain size granite, ochre layered red to orangeyellow pebbles, sanitary towel (cleaned by the sea), oak leaf, leaves of an unidentified treegreen glass bottle, adhesive strips of sanitary towel, crate, intact apple (granny smith), matt-green pebble, onion casing (outer three layers, perfect even if hollow), rubber band, broken flip-flops, part of a crate, rope with knots tightly jammed between rocks, clump of seaweed intertwined with black plastic rubbish bag & fishing net with green leader rope, short fluorescent-light tube, white plastic glove (right hand), plastic oil can, seaweed, segment of large anchor rope with frayed ends, sawn birch log (approx. 30cm), large plastic ridged tube, metal sphere with sea life still attached & living, plastic engine oil can (1lt) with attached mussels & ropes (at one time used as a float marker), stake with fishing wire & large hook, remains of a heron, lower rib cage & tail – feathers dark grey to black  - delicate bones - tail bones curling up to a red point - on the remaining leg bones 3 rings - one bleached white plastic - one green plastic ring inscribed with numeric "4" – one metal plastic coated yellow ring inscribed
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reaching the mansion; a fenced madhouse overlooking the dunes a mansion for tortured souls buffeted by the Atlantic wind a mansion of screaming silence.

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To be on the edge of a continent and face the setting sun bleed into the saltsea of its rejuvenation, to rediscover the original moment when ocean's terror seizes the heart, a wind-driven Newday to find & comprehend infinity began in a to & fro walking of the esplanade from muttonfat jade river to harbour... Miniature minaret port guiding flickering lights keep sentinel on the incoming tide, watching the breakers,,, high breakers, windtugged gulls surge and sway under full wingspan.

         As the Atlantic rolls in I understand the Greeks' reluctance to name seasky colour, it is ever changing, a living mirror reflecting light and darkness, a quilted sequence of rippled & smooth water, hazed, in constant movement, dull or shimmering. O fallando do mar; the sea's Ahswishwashah mingles with the smell of salt & mercury. The foghorn wails, guiding skiff, hooker, scow,  coble, smack, dogger, buss, drifter, trawler, purse-seiner, whaler, to harbour through banks of fog out at sea. The swelling Atlantic gives no rest save final rest. Fishingboats must be pulled out of the sea and put back into the sea. Fishing folk watch each operation, though none watch their own boats going out, blackfrocked women help pushing the boats up the ramp on their return.

         Portside, under a frayed green awning, a make shift platform, a raft of rattling planks and salt rusted iron over the slanting road, a stack of plastic chairs, a table. More than a half dozen fisherman and the bar becomes filled with the whole thundering dark sea, raucous rasped voices born of a thirst with only saltwater in sight reverberate and sway among net snaring objects hanging from the low rafted ceiling: ancient glass floats, rusting iron cups, the jaw of a shark, shells, fishermen's knots, net mending shuttles. Over the threshold a blaring TV, cartoons of shipwrecked rafts, behind the squaring counter a nakedblonde calendar, pots atop an ancient fat encrusted gas stove, I dare not ask nor sample.

- Un copo de vinho verde branco, the glass is filled past the rim spilling onto the counter. - Sessenta escudos.

         Sitting outside, watching the sea spilling over the retaining wall and onto the road, fishermen ebb & flow over the rattling boards, my glass totters and jumps on the plastic table, conversations from within burst out to collide with the splashing waves. The bartender comes to glance onto the spilling sea returning a moment later to bring a saucer of unshelled peanuts.

         Watching the sea I am reminded of Paolo Conte's line; ma la paura che ci fa quel mare scuro che si muove anche di notte, non sta fermo mai.

         A fisherman rounds the corner, wife and two young daughters by his side, a bundle of nets in his embrace. As he hooks a net to the wall wife & daughters sit on a bench, shoulders to the stone wall. Fisherman mending nets, mother crocheting a seaspume lace curtain, nets for fish, nets for catching stray glances.

         Another copo, maduro this time, cinquenta escudos, it does not overflow the rim. Outside the fisherman mends his net. With the sea behind them I can look on unabashed. Sea spray pluming/blooming over the seawall.

         Old sea-dog, children and women gather round. An older woman inspects the lace, gathers the length and rolls it into a neat bundle before pinning it with a large safety-pin. It will not drag on the street.

         The fishing net is made up of two layers, the wider meshed layers lending support and evenness to the finer meshed one. The fisherman inspects and repairs, strands that have come loose are either cut away with his teeth or a small knife, then the shuttle goes to work, severed connections are remade. The existing net serves as the pattern, pulling on the net he calculates the amount of fishing wire to be added, the new knots made expertly, surplus strands are cut away. Guide lines, weights and floats are also inspected.

         That which outofsea appears a jumbled mass will, once in the silencing seadepth, dance a veiled ether dance.

         Old sea-dog looks over the net and grumbles, rasp-voiced he plays the gruff grandfather to daring children before bursting into raucous laughter; conspiratorial eyed he mistrusts silence.

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Twilight on a perfect to be gibbous night, three nights after full, betwixt muttonfat jade river footbridge and Veleiro's bar, the fisherman's cafe: mid esplanade, gesticulating a sharade to the absant sun; the wildman stood; raven cloacked... miming messages in hisown language, sang a song hisown creating world; striving to revoke the irriversable sun'spassage, encantoado espertador from the tourture house of human souls, words beyond comprehension... Vainamoinen's kin.

         Heeding the shrieks of the lone Earth mid Heaven sea mew, sight scanning its flight from distant seaspray enrobed mansion at dunes end, curving the esplanade's contour overhead, pursuing to harbour's embrace and flight's end; the sea's resounding applaud exalt the Wildman's cryptic mime.

         Thoughts unformed dwelling in unfathomed ocean ebbing and flowing in constant purling movement; remove what you know and all that is left is unbounded process, to but bathe in its waters of hope and never to want for more than that.

         A mirror mirroring onto itself; a hand thrust out for escudos re-establishing the illusion of fact. Hallow footsteps punctuate my journey to harbour's side.

         Veleiro bar solitary as the echo of an abandoned vessel could be, a glass of red maduro an eying of the pot harbouring stove. Outside, on the rickety platform, table & chairs howling - sitting under tattered green sail I drink wine and greedily savour the moment.

         Next to the cafe a group of fishingfolk sat, stood, talked, laughed, gesticulated, spat; the women daintily, moving to one side, letting their gobs freefall in perfect perpendicularity; the men sending their gobs in that perfect arc of fourtyfive degrees as far as anything shot out at fourtyfive degrees can go. I took the golden mean, the take-it-now or weep for nothing for all time to come.

         Returning inside to play a game of gestures and grimaces of pointing and retracting of taking and giving until on the counter a trilogy of saucers appears. 3 large Portuguese sardinhas, heads & tails overhanging, accompanied by a generous onion serving with bay leaves. And pao, yes, one please, I now know the size of a bread roll haloed by a white saucer, and a glass of maduro tinto ink akin, the hand-till tolls 400 escudos, we smile, the bartender and I, as he aligns the empty saucer of promise that is bear the remains.

         The glorious darkening sky welcomes me anew, beneath the chair the boards creak twitch and groan. Settled, wined, sardined, paoed and secret companied; I watch the sea, eat delicacies between me and the minaret towered port guiding lights beyond which is the sigh so sea see sae she swish swash sea to endless reach of ear and eye.

         Fishingfolk, fishermen and women of the long sea watching and washing sea, trick trach talk, gestures always end seaward, seabonded, sea braided, sea cast, gather the gob and spit splash, the one with half a mouth of teeth, upper right toothed and upper left toothless, smiles of comic Janus profile; right profiles smiles with beacon white teeth, left profile smiles a gaping darkness. Vainamoinen's kantala must have been made from such a pike jaw.

         As eye eat every detail of sardines wrought with care, on the once empty part of the trilogy perfect skeletons accumulate, head intact, deadfisheye cooked to popping white cataract perfection; blinded sardine watching without seeing to the core of my eye which watch the sea and its folk, the tail by backbone attached, a tail that once knew of the deep unbounded sea. The delicate bones that form the rib cage, if fish have ribs and if sardines have sea bones, these are the finest, bristle hairs from which a brush could be made. What sea monsters could they paint or are they only for the stomach gut darkness of a sardine Jonah knows. Unbroken backbones arched in an aberrant outofsea fashion form a cascade of ?¿?¿?¿?¿ - Gob splat, ha ha ho and then ... end wine end sardines, still alittle pao.

         Empty plated and empty glassed, make the miracle, just one, one, once more. Yes it is good, it is very good! Pick poke pick the biggest, no the best, the best cooked is not the biggest, and onions, soft sweet a hint of vinegar onions, a pile upon a pile of them with bay leaves, does the wanderer know not to eat them, but to suck upon the tree leave of the bay as one sucks upon a fish tail, your eyes glance questioningly. Wine flows to the rim without brimming over. The miracle: the universe can be so small; an intimate boundless ocean; a rusty cafe; a raft of rickety boards on rusty supports of sea salted iron floating in space; the stone dilapidated house next to the cafe; a gathering of apostles awaiting the arrival of the one who will walk the sea and guide them gently to those places that as children they dreamt of.

         The sardine in one, the remains in the other, the broken bread in the other still, a woman watches me eat the last, pulling the flesh away from the bones with lip bared teeth, the bristly fishbones tickling my nose, net caught sardine fish head who once knew the sea between right thumb and index, tail at the other end, sinister thumb and index. Where tails belong.

         Sucking fish taste from my thumb, did the salmon Lynn Feic who fed on wisdom's hazelnuts provide Finn Mac Coul with wisdom or does the sucking of thumbs gain one only knowledge?

         And Oannes, lord of wisdom, does he still emerge from the sea each morning to teach us of the tilling on land, of healing and of writing and does he still retire again to the depths with dusk? is the great fish Mah still holding up the universe for us? do fish still bring us parcels of mud from the sea floor for us to recreate an earth? away from here, can all this be contained in Portuguese yellowtinned sardines? A fishbone quartet of eying blindness out of a net - wisdom's form.

         From the sea laughter caracols in the wake of a ship. They talk, knowing each other' fish as their own pockets, a game of keys begins, yesterday's net mender's hand thrust out of pocket with a key ring offering to the youngest among them, every one follows suite, keys are piled on the fish catching hand, a mound at first it becomes a mountain of keys, car keys, boatkeys, house keys, town key, fort key, key to a lost padlock, key of a cousin lost to an uncle key, the recipient bends at the knee, the weight crushing, Sisyphus has an easy time of it, keys jingle, a netfull of keys, sinking through the rings of purgatory and further still to hells pit. Merqury, mazda, honda, toyota, st christopher, knotted rope, david's star, ying-yang, horn of goodfortune, fist with thumb between index and middle finger; none of the talismans attached by chain, rope or leather thong will help an anchor of keys from sinking through the abyss. Generously they laugh and take back, each to his and her burden, a spare key is closely inspected. Mine? Yours? Our? No! No!! No!!! I feel like rushing over, eye the observer, to say mine, mine, mine!!!!, let me take some of the burden. But tourists don't exist in the ocean, have any ever been caught in a net? Which fish is a stranger to the seasheseashhh? Shhh tell no fibslienetwithlies, no lie or ley of the land ever concerned these ploughers of the sea, plough the ocean and no scar remains save on the plougher. the sea gives shhh takes, raging on her surface, Silent into her depths, Ha-de ser o que Deus Quizer, mae de deus, atlantida, nova jerusalem, cristo salva, moises joel, mar de galilea, pequena, flecha, san da guia, branca maria, sao bento, fatima, nuno, dorca, linda, maria helena, jacinta, maria, teresa malfada, cristosalva, merciana, velho cabaca, sol nascente, churriba, atlantida, jovem seaeia, badalico, st antonio, touta, manuel raimundo, patricia carina, nani claudia, paulo renato, olivia cristina, antartica, logoal, anfibio, fernando, aninhas, rosita, dorca, linda, luis manuel, gaivota

a tolling of bells, a telling of bellsnames, ask no questions. Ire not her wrath. Silence.

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