Aaaaaaaghdf;lahdf;lkyjfasdf!!! (Viveiro, Spain)

I'm writing this a little past noon -- in ten hours I will be at sea on a boat, embarking on a twenty-something hour fishing excursion! Whoa! Aaah! Thrilling! adflajdpfoiuare;lkjfasdf. This post will probably be short and possibly incoherent, since I went to sleep just a few hours ago (my first post-college all-nighter!) and, according to my Master Plan, am not even supposed to be awake right now. In a perfect world, a world in which Master Plans are followed, I would stay up all night again tonight to be able to witness every activity aboard the ship; in order to do that, I need to be well-rested. Alas! Imperfect world! We'll see how long I last on the boat. Maybe I have vast reserves of adrenaline, like Alaska with its oil, and I can tap them unsustainably.

The past two days have been eventful, as you may have gathered by now. Well, no -- the past two nights have been eventful. I arrived to Viveiro on Tuesday evening (already a change in my itinerary! I could find exactly zero cheap pensions in Carinho), and that night, after exploring the old town, happened across preparations for a concert in the main plaza. Wonderful! I sat in the same spot for four hours, watching people pass me by before the music started, and then watching people dance and nod their heads after the music started, and felt pretty lucky to be alive and human. The music was great (pronounced "ga-rate!", with exclamation point) -- a fusion of folk (bagpipe and fiddle), jazz (saxophone and drums), and Caribbean rhythms, so people weren't sure whether to sway or shake their hips or folk dance. I tapped my foot and patted my knees with my hands -- classic solution to the which-dance? problem.

The next day, despite my steely determination to sleep in, I woke up early and walked to the port, which is enormous and technically in Celeiro, the next (tiny) town over -- a forty-minute walk from my pension, which is, as I'm learning many cheap pensions are, far away from the Places I Want to Be. It's called Pension Martinez, though, so, like the Restaurante Martinez, has an automatic 4-star rating. There was little happening at the docks -- not a single fisherman! -- so I wandered around Celeiro for a while, enchanted by the narrow streets and grape vines growing over tool shed roofs and countless (actually probably countable, because it is a tiny town) abandoned and decrepit buildings that looked older than most of the abandoned and decrepit buildings I'd seen so far. The towns, Viveiro and Celeiro, and the region itself, feel different from everywhere else I've been in Galicia, but, aside from the obvious differences in location, landscape, and history, I couldn't tell you how. I love the intangible qualities that make each place unique, that make the Galician coast seem to span several countries that just happen to share a language and culture. (That may not have made sense, but smile and nod for now. Remember: I am running on little more than the chocolate I had for breakfast.)

I had been told to go back to the docks at around eight, when the trawling boats that go out daily come into port and their fish is auctioned, so that is what I did! In fact, the boats arrived closer to nine, by which time I had accumulated enough boldness to walk up to the owner of two ships and say, "Hello! Excuse me!" And that was all I said, because he immediately responded, "Let me guess: You want to see the inside of the ship." Mind-reader! I said, "Yes!!!" and he called the nearest ship's captain over. Francisco, the captain, gave me a world-class tour of the ship -- a big ship (perhaps 25 meters long?) -- and explained how the nets worked (the boats go out in pairs and string a gigantic net between them), showed me where the fish were cleaned and stored, briefly led me through the loud engine room, and then took me to the bridge (I think that this is what it's called -- the window-walled room with the steering joysticks and so much more), where he described in detail the computer technology that makes navigating these days so much easier than a few years ago. "But this is a poorly equipped vessel!" he said. "See that ship over there? It's brand-new, just five years old, and has state-of-the-art technology. I know the owner. Want me to introduce you to him?" Mind-reader! I said, "Yes!!!"

Jose, the owner of this larger (over thirty meters long and eight wide) and noticeably higher-tech ship, told me to wait for a while -- the fish had to be unloaded before we could board without getting in the way. Then -- THEN -- we went aboard, and I had the longest and most intense question-and-answer session of my life (and I was the questioner!). Jose is intimidatingly intense, but I held up my own against his piercing continuous eye contact and pretty soon he started giving me more than simple explanations about the functioning of the ship and the lives of the people aboard it. The technology is impressive indeed! My goodness gracious me! At any given moment, he can see: the exact shape of the ocean floor, the weather and wind forecasts, currents, any objects around him (if they are ships, he knows which ship it is, in which direction it's headed and how fast), shoals of different kinds of fish, the positioning of the net and how much fish has been caught in it already, the period of the waves, the meaning of life -- you name it. Just about the only thing that the technology can't do is tell you exactly where to find fish; for that, he told me, you need a "sense of smell" (which he apparently has). He explained that they fished in a certain zone in the summer and another in winter, both near the place where the ocean floor drops off into the deep, and, at the end of the long conversation, when I finally managed to tell him what my project was about (he's a talker), immediately exhibited prodigious knowledge about every natural cycle that could affect fishing.

Some of the information was not new -- migrations, spawning -- but some things I had never heard before! For instance: the power of the moon. Until now, I have always linked the moon to the tides, and hadn't heard a thing about how it affects fishing far from the coast. Jose assured me that it does, and most dramatically. When the moon is full, certain kinds of fish rise to the surface, thinking it is day (or at least sensing that it is light), and others sink farther into the depths, taking advantage of the greater visibility to feed in more richer zones. Other species behave differently when the moon is waxing than when it is waning, although I didn't understand why this was (what factors other than amount of light?). Well, those two sentences surely don't do justice to the moon's role in fishing (which is more obvious on the coast, where the magnitude of the tides changes over the course of the lunar cycle and also over the course of the year -- when the Earth is closer to the Sun, the tides are greater), but I was thrilled that these were connections that the captain of a state-of-the-art ship had made. Jose also told me that many fish populations follow a four- or five-year cycle -- after one good fishing year, there are usually three or four bad fishing years before the next abundance -- but he couldn't explain why. His closing remark on natural cycles was: "Even with all of this technology, we're still subject to the exact same things that our forefathers two hundred years ago were subject to" -- those things being the patterns and whims of nature.

I had one last question for Jose, and asked it in characteristic awkward form: "Jose -- I have a question to ask -- butpleasedon'tfeelobligatedtosayyes -- it'sreallyokayifyousayno -- okayhere'sthequestion: do you think that I could go out with you on the boat tomorrow night?" He didn't say, "Yes!!!" but he did say, "Yes," stressing that there was going to be bad weather (I promised that I don't get seasick -- I am pretty sure that this is true) and I wouldn't see the boat or ten-man crew working at its prime. No worries! I get to see them working! Sub-prime or not, it's so exciting! The boat leaves at around 10:00 pm each night and comes in the following evening -- probably 8:00ish on Friday, Jose told me. Almost a full day in the open sea! I almost skipped away.

I wanted to see the large boats come in at around 2:00 am, so I decided to walk back to Viveiro to watch another open-air concert in the main plaza (there are concerts every night for two weeks). This time it was rock -- a group called Burning, which has been around for decades -- and I sat, as I had the night before, alone in a crowd of couples and families. Sob. But: miracle! The empathetic capabilities of children! Out of the blue, an adorable little boy came and sat next to me on my step. I said, "Hi!" and he said, "Hi! What's your name?" His sister joined us soon afterward, and I spent the next hour or so getting to know Jorge and Marta, who are six and eight, respectively, dancing with them, and waging sunflower seed war against them. They are from Madrid. Jorge's best friend's name is Victor. Marta's best friend's name is Celia. Jorge thought the music was too loud. Marta plays the flute and thinks English is hard. She asked me what my mother's name was. Instant intimacy. They were the most delightful children I have ever met. They were like miniature versions of adults (except for the sunflower seed wars), complete with typical Spanish hand gestures combined with the appropriate meaningful eyebrow movements, and I couldn't stop laughing. Once again, and in the same place, I felt pretty lucky to be alive and human. I met their parents, also extraordinarily open and friendly people, who told me that they couldn't get their children to shut up or stop engaging strangers in conversations (this with big smiles on their faces), and -- ugh. The world is full of such good people! I hope that Jorge and Marta have beautiful lives.

When the concert was over, I walked back to the docks (the walk was scarier each time I made it, because the street was darker and more deserted), and spent the next four and a half hours in a zombie-like daze, watching boats that had been out at sea for two weeks unload their cargo and occasionally talking to a worker or to the director of the lonja, who was bent on making me feel as comfortable as possible. It was interesting to see the boats unload, and less interesting to watch the 5:00 am auction, which was exactly like every other auction I've seen (if at a larger lonja than most, and spread out in four separate halls). The main reason I stayed at the lonja all night was so that I would be able to sleep today and stay up again tonight. FAILED PLAN. Perhaps I'll manage to conk out this afternoon after posting this.

Or maybe I am just too psyched (I haven't used that word in so long! it is a great word!) about the upcoming boat trip. I hope that watching the fish die isn't too traumatic an experience. That's something I've been meaning to write about: desensitization to fish death. But it will have to be another day. My "probably short" post has turned into a chapter, and I doubt anyone has been able to read this far. What's an appropriately nautical way to end this post? Thar she blows! Land ho! Yaaaargh! Thus shall I speak tonight.