Now Invisible Waves
The fishermen arrange themselves in an orderly row, each tending to at least three fishing poles. These are not fishing poles for a pond or a lake or river, but the intimidatingly long fishing poles used for the sea, which beats against the low cliff on which they stand, a few meters above the water. Sunset blazes its final fuchsia breath before the dark sky and darker ocean join to create a great black depth, a curtain — raised or drawn— and this dance whose dancers don’t think about the choreography but live it in improvised perfection, evening after evening, drawing up life from the deep waters, and putting out its lights before casting the line and its deadly glitter back into the topaz waves.
When the first octopus is drawn up — a perfect marvel, its eight intelligent limbs grasping at the sudden twilight, the air — it is dispatched quickly, its once efficient organs and sharp beak tossed back into the incoming tide. The fisherman looks up at the spectators — here for the sunset, the ocean, the rock formations of Boca do Inferno — and holds up the hollowed octopus, offering it to a pale onlooker, enjoying the squeamishness of those who do not know how to pull life up from the sea, empty it out, rearrange and eat it as they have been doing for too many generations to count, just as they are doing this evening.
There is no telling if these men come here out of necessity — which is where this ritual began — or some other need, not tied to survival of the physical body, but the spirit, a sense of tradition, of traditions such as this one where a group of men cast deadly glitter into the night while a golden smile of gibbous moon rises above, casting no light of its own.