Episode
Fisherman's Blues
- Published
- Dec 14, 2024
- Duration seconds
- 555
- Processing state
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- https://javiertruben.substack.com/p/fishermans-blue
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Summary
Farmers, ranchers, and fishermen, the pillars of the primary sector, have been frequently depicted in literature throughout history. Growing up in the shoreline, from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean Sea, and even the Atlantic Ocean for extended periods, I’ve developed a stronger connection with those who make their living as fishermen. Yesterday, I was stunned while reading an interview with Vicenç Comí, the skipper of the trawler Sinera. He has been struggling to survive the absurd regulations imposed by the bureaucrats of the European Union. However, the most recent decision, which granted him only a 27-day fishing permit, effectively sealed his fate. According to the documents he has been diligently collecting in archives, his family has been engaged in fishing for four centuries, spanning seventeen generations. After two adventurous years in the Airborne, where I experienced military skydiving without any sense of mortality, due to my youthful age and the boldness that came with it, I landed a plum job as a seaman, which allowed me to read all I could for ten consecutive years, averaging twelve novels per week. I blissfully called my own PhD on Comparative Literature. By then, in the glorious 90s, I was convinced that the essence of being a fiction writer was more about reading than writing, lest I resorted to overused clichés and conventional themes, because the meaning of the word novel means write something new or unusual in an interesting way. From the dock of the marina, surrounded by slender sailboats and formidable motorboats, I witnessed every day the trawlers embarking on their journeys before sunrise and returning at five in the afternoon, preparing on the deck the boxes for the fish auction. Sometimes, they raced each other to moor their boats before…