No Man Is a Continent – We Are All Islands

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The Azores islands lie right here the place the tectonic plates of the three main continents of Europe, Africa and America grind, push and shove. Right here earth’s entrails spew out molten rock and constructed a submarine wall that’s truly the longest submerged mountain vary on the planet, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This submarine mountain vary extends from Greenland, passes by means of Iceland, flows between America and Europe, Africa and South America, then, strikes all the way down to the very tip of Africa, the place it, subsequent, turns East on the Cape of Good Hope and stretches onward to the Indian Ocean.

After 5 to 6 hours of flight from Boston, of spying beneath and infinite blue mass of the Atlantic, approaching the islands, we expect we’re reaching a big roadwork in the course of the Ocean. Right here the huge floor of the Atlantic opens up into gigantic mounds that pile up as if dug out by large ocean gophers. Then, as our aircraft descends, the islands tackle the appearance of an oversize Monument to Earth, a pure Stonehenge that rises from the underside of the ocean and has us spell certain till we land.

These islands lie smack on the Mid Atlantic Ridge and are within the crossroads (the cross seas), of the New and Outdated World. It’s right here the place north meets south and east meets west, and vice-versa. An individual might say, they’re a compass rose in Celtic knot, the place they’re within the southern a part of north and the northern a part of south; within the jap a part of west and western a part of east of the Atlantic Ocean. A king Arthur’s actuality, time warped in the course of nowhere, this magic lava rubble of emerald meadows and mountain ridges, marks the center of the Atlantic Ocean, give it an arcane, magic high quality. These are the Azores the place the place flat Earth grew to become the globe.

On this outpost of the Portuguese sea campaign is the place I stay, and the place I used to be born. Surrounded by the blue desert of the Atlantic, every island is a luxuriant emerald gem, a inexperienced refuge in the course of the blue indigo vastness. There may be right here a bond of the individuals with this huge physique of water we name our house. This archipelago as soon as referred to as the Islands of Mist, the Flemish Isles or the Isles of Prince Henry, the Navigator, are an Avalon actuality that could be a two hour flight away from Lisbon and 5 and a half from New York, about one third of the best way to America. Faraway from any recognized continent, to the Azorean individuals, every of the archipelago’s 9 islands is a digital mainland. The rugged and sometimes mountainous panorama offers us the impression of dwelling not on landlocked islands, however on vicarious continents to the ability of 9, a inexperienced wonderland.

These islands are so inexperienced that even vacationers who’ve visited Eire admit that, undoubtedly, the Azores are greener than Eire 12 months lengthy. Like Eire, Scotland and Galiza, north of Portugal, the panorama has one thing Celtic. Celtic are the Atlantic wind swept wealthy inexperienced meadows, the rolling pastures, the hills and mountains, the lichen coated stone partitions, and windy roads. That is the North Atlantic’s very Secret World, a inexperienced and blue, non-tropical paradise

South of this island, on the Island of Sao Miguel, known as the emerald isle, is precisely the place I used to be born. That’s this was the island considered on the very brim of the flat world again in time. It was a violent world of sudden volcanoes and earthquakes, of boiling fumaroles and sizzling springs, of sulphur pits and rising and submerging earth, mixed with the Mid Atlantic excessive humidity and gale pressure storm winds on daily basis within the winter time. For that motive the settlers gave it the title of Saint Michael, the island that will have as a protector the angel that fights hell itself. The individuals of this island have been additionally fittingly nicknamed the “coriscos,” or daredevils, for being powerful, short-tempered individuals who of their love of life dared the very harsh components that surrounded them and managed to make a dwelling on this brim of hell world itself.

Being a “Corisco,” from my earlier dwelling on that island, I keep in mind my house which confronted the Atlantic Ocean. I keep in mind the weak sallow solar winters when dolphins paraded in entrance of our line of view, frolicked their approach by means of the floor of the ocean in amusing marine acrobatics, elegant somersaulting and pirouetting. Ones with them, watching their enjoyable made us need to take off, go away our island oasis and comply with them freely by means of the open waters of the Atlantic.

From our upstairs home windows we additionally noticed ships come and ships go. Prisoners of this blue enclosure of the Atlantic, we have been the Atlantic’s because the Atlantic was ours, and though we wished out of right here, once we moved, we moved over to lands near the Atlantic Ocean; lands, altogether, by no means too removed from a mixture of the watery ingredient and inexperienced pastures close by, be it in Bristol, Tiverton, Windfall, Newport, Cape Cod, Hyannis or different seaside cities and villages of the New England states.

Central Atlantic Islanders, we had this intrinsic urge or bond with the world on the market. Just like the Inuit of Alaska, who known as themselves, “Inuit,” that means the “Individuals,” when round them there was hardly anybody however bears, seals and whales, we, too in our Mid-Atlantic isolation, felt a robust bond to the world. We knew nobody else however ourselves and, after all, the numerous ships that docked on a few of our ports. Our idea of Portugal, truly, was our very island. We have been Portugal, and we have been Europe, though, nearly all of us had by no means been both to Portugal or wherever within the outdated continent. In truth, there was a legislation that prohibited the free motion of individuals’s in Portugal, in order that any of us would hardly ever journey or resettle on one other island. That contributed to micro-cultures throughout the archipelago of the Azores, or a nine-folded actuality of the Azores, every island claiming to be the Azores in its personal approach. That’s the actuality even at this time, when being on one other island, is like being on a completely totally different world, a distinct Azores altogether.

What we, actually, weren’t, and we have been effectively conscious, was America, and America was a better magic than the Azores themselves. America was the magic California, New York, the lands of snow and ice, multi functional, a land with a robust attract. It was related to cash, vehicles, Hollywood films, loads of every thing below the solar, meals, plenty of meals, wealth, plenty of wealth. By way of the pictures individuals despatched again to the islands, America spelled progress, consolation, freedom, and glamor. It was a spot of bicycles, toys galore, fridges, plush vehicles, heat houses with cozy sofas and arm chairs, TV’s, good tasting sweet and candy smelling gum, snug garments, ladies who wore heavy lipstick; a spot the place one could be protein enriched plump (fats being one thing fascinating in these days). It was a land of wood homes, of piles of snow, of wooded environment in every single place, of “Cheese!” smiles and extra smiles, a contented, rich, confident realm. Who, due to this fact, within the Azores didn’t dream of shifting to America in these days? Remoted and uncared for by Portugal, America was like a pure extension of those islands. It attracted us like a magnet. Fall River, New Bedford, Windfall, Boston, Newport, Bristol, Tiverton, Taunton, Lowell, Pawtucket, California grew to become family names right here. The impression of America on these islands was such, that there’s not one Azorean right here on the island at this time that doesn’t have a relative or an acquaintance dwelling on the opposite aspect of the Atlantic Ocean, that’s the actuality. America grew to become, certainly, a part of the Azores 1960’s and 1970’s warp and woof.

Then, in the future in 1968, it was our flip. We moved on to Fall River, Massachusetts and the world would by no means once more be the identical.

Leaving the Mid-Atlantic Ridge actuality, it was like arriving at a brand new flat land world, an expanse that took the place of the deep huge ocean and supplied us an Ocean of potentialities. Immigrants, then we rapidly discovered what America was actually all about; being new there, we, certainly, didn’t take It as a right. We let go of our roots, we began talking and pondering American. We have been grafted to America, America was us.

Humorous is that we quickly perceived that America was product of islands too. There we have been the “Portuguee,” the French Cannocks, from Canada, the Polacks, the “Italiano” and the Irish. For one, we began being attentive to Ok’s, Y’s and W’s, letters that didn’t exist in our alphabet. Going for a trip, felt like being a kind of dolphins on the market once we have been again within the Azores, diligently attempting to determine the world of Individuals by means of the billboards and indicators we learn. Coming from a moist world, America was a dry expanse, a world tangent to ours, a New England woodland inexperienced ocean, faraway from us by centuries of progress and dry land imbued with the spirit of Indians and glaciers of yore.

America was, thus, as we understood it, put collectively of many ethnic teams or pockets of people that like Lego items got here collectively below one America for all. There have been the totally different neighborhoods, and ethnic occasions that proved that America was a mosaic of cultures, actually, with a really robust, typically over bloated patriotic strand that saved us all collectively.

Like a Christmas spruce with a central shaft secured to a tree assist, with branches coated with tinsel and vibrant lights of all colours that was America. The bottom, was, after all, America’s historical past of the Struggle of Independence and the gargantuan efforts to interrupt away from an outdated time system as that of oppressive kings and repressive England. It was Americas’s model new historical past of independence and democracy.

The Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas time have been three of its most vital highlights and the assumption in its personal greatness was one thing that made It tick, made us need to tick to. America was a younger maverick of a rustic, and to have grown up in America was nice! On the similar time, we saved a penchant for the islands and other people, the land from the place we had come. How might we not?

Right now, after having lived in Massachusetts and for about 20 years in Central Europe, within the Netherlands and Germany, I returned full circle to those islands. Right here, I notice that I’m not from right here any longer; that I don’t match right here. The world tradition caught up with the Azores, for certain, and the Azores are now not what they was once. These usually are not the islanders we as soon as have been. That is extra like a shallow continental, obsessive compulsive shopper society which has been spoiled by the current fast affluence led to by the adherence of Portugal to the European Union.

The music, customs and habits are these of any metropolis in mid America, London or Paris, the costs on something, as effectively. That’s, the worldwide tradition has turned the islanders into shoppers of something and every thing. Right here too is the realm of cell telephones, Ipods, Fb, the social nets, and no matter is on the market within the deep huge world. They crave for the newest, the very best quality, the most costly many one other ultra-technological gadget, toy or piece of apparatus. Low in self-worth, they’ve a inferiority advanced, that makes them need to vie with the extra prosperous and highly effective Northern a part of Europe minus the self-discipline, arduous work and moderation. The style, due to this fact, right here, as wherever else within the huge capitals of the world, is for something extravagant, extreme, wasteful and pretentious. Having been for a lot of many years the poorest nation of Europe, it now reveals a progress that defies a few of their different realities, in order that, for instance, they’re forcing everybody to make use of the net providers for presidency functions, when a very good portion of the persons are not prepared for it but. It’s a technological age paperwork that borders on technological Fascism of some type. A lot is finished by means of self-importance, to show their prominence and self-importance.

Sadly, what the Spaniards weren’t in a position to do century after century, in solely about three many years, Brussels did. Because of this new tradition there may be the drug and break-ins scene, a world of corruption and cultural excesses of a society receiving subsidies for every thing they want and past. The looseness and the indulgence of the internal metropolis contaminated the minds and customs of the individuals right here and the straightforward, hardworking and unassuming Azorean environment is gone.

The reality is, at this time’s islanders don’t want to go away the Azores any extra. The They are saying their America is right here, that they haven’t any want or need for America, that America will not be what it’s cracked to be — they certainly have turned their backs on America, however they’re doing the identical to their age outdated values and Beliefs. Whereas they undoubtedly grew to become extra prosperous and up to date with the remainder of Europe, they misplaced on humility, on honesty, on integrity. Proud international age individuals, they’re an inside out society; one subservient to international tendencies and international mores; servants, if not slaves to their very own self-indulgence, self-importance and hedonism. Spoiled by subsidies and authorities hand-outs they make up a “Schau und Glanz” society, one led by greed, conceitedness and an exaggerated sense of self significance.

But, what fascinates me extra on dwelling again right here within the Azores is the Historical past of the Age of Discovery, our historical past ‘s wealthy previous.

Right here born, though the ocean is what shapes our character, we even have an amazing attachment to the land, for in spite of everything, in a time of famine as was the time of the Hundred Years and the Iberian Wars in Europe, everybody who moved right here was in search of a peaceable place, a spot away from fixed armed conflicts, merely, a patch of land to farm and feed their household. We, Azoreans have been, due to this fact, a product of an agrarian society, one connected to the fields, dedicated to autonomous farming and cows, plenty of cows; whereas dreaming to in the future higher our lot in some way within the metropolis or by shifting elsewhere every time attainable.

Individuals who misplaced contact with the outdated continent, most of the names round listed here are the one residual proof of our origins. De Melo, my title, most likely comes from someplace near the place the caravelles sailed out, from town of Lisbon or its environment. It additionally factors to a spot close to the best level of Portugal, known as the village of Melo within the very heart of Portugal. Another names have been translated into Portuguese from Flemish and French just like the van Hagen into Silveiras, van Huerte into Horta, van Brugge to de Bruge, Breton to Bretao, Franc into Franco, Bernard into Bernardo, Ormond into Ormonde, Brun to Brum, and so forth. Others have remained the identical, just like the Bettencourt, Fischer, Wallenstein, Weber, Schneider, and so forth. The Spanish invasion right here for sixty years from 1582 to 1640 left names like Toledo, Borba and Avila. This was certainly, a primary de facto European melting -pot, the place the place individuals got here collectively from totally different locations in Portugal and Europe and from right here unfold the world over, particularly to lands of Brazil Hawaii, Bermuda and North America.

Then, similar to the seas round us, the extra distant the island, the rougher, the much less fluent the language is. Sao Miguel, the island the place I got here from, for instance, has a really robust French accent, which factors to the affect of individuals from Bretagne. One of many cities is even named Bretanha after Brittany, Bretagne in France. On one other island, the island of Faial, extra affected by the ingression of the individuals of Flanders, there’s a city known as the Village of the Flemish, or the Flamengos for a similar motive.

A world indifferent from ours, though we felt we have been Portugal and Europe, we have been a individuals turned to the West. Portugal and Europe weren’t the route of our ambitions. West, to the New World, was certainly the one route we knew for hundreds of years. 200 and sixty years in the past it was to the southern a part of Brazil, particularly to the State of Santa Catarina that our individuals moved to. The king of Portugal himself, promoted this mass resettlement at the moment to be sure that by means of an intensive settlement of the southern a part of Brazil, the Spaniards wouldn’t encroach or take over that area. My very own Nice-Grandparents settled in Brazil and lived there a few years earlier than they returned to the islands. For a very long time, Brazil was the Hy Brasile of Celtic lore. It was our future as we have been Brazil’s.

At one other time prior to now, waves of Azoreans moved on to Hawaii and Bermuda, whereas others boarded the whaling ships that got here by right here from the New England states, and doing so, began a circulation of individuals to Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, the three most wanted locations in New England for the Azoreans. With the Gold Rush, we, then, moved on to California and within the early twentieth century, to Montreal, Ontario, Toronto, Quebec, Vancouver, B.C. and different cities in Canada.

To Brazil we introduced our language and our customs, our Carneval, our religiosity, our Holy Spirit Cult, you title it. To Hawaii we took a musical instrument which was the forerunner of the ukulele. We additionally introduced candy bread and pineapple there. To America we introduced our labor and our spirit of endeavour and journey. From the Far East, we introduced the hydrangea, camellias, North people Island pine bushes, tea plantations, orange bushes, Japanese rose bushes and a ginger like lily plant that covers the hills right here in September. From America, we introduced information of our realization exterior these islands, of a model new nation which made particular person progress attainable; gave everybody a possibility to a greater lifestyle, the arrogance of being financially unbiased and holding a way of accomplishment not possible on the islands.

Portuguese outposts, these islands, are the islands of Prince Henry, the Navigator, the person, the prince, the chief of the Order of Christ in Portugal, the previous Order of the Templars in disguise. On these distant islands, faraway from each continent, south of the sinking of the Titanic, and north from the Sargasso seas, we, right here, are linked to a time in historical past when the world unfolded and we sailed the seven seas. They’re the islands of the Finisterre, a Finis Mare, an finish of the world and sea actuality, islands of fireside and brimstone, a spot the place the secrets and techniques of the Atlantic Ocean have been first unlocked and the place flat world was the globe as we all know it at this time.

After the instant settlement of the islands, when cattle, pigs and goats have been introduced in and allowed to open up the land for people, households from totally different areas of Portugal and Europe wandered in. This was adopted by an period of wheat and woad, when the Azores grew to become the granary of the Age of Discovery and woad, a plant used as dye, was exported to Flanders. Then got here the Age of the Orange groves, when the English got here and oranges have been despatched from right here to England galore. Portugal, the truth is, grew to become the primary western nation that introduced oranges from the Far East, specifically China and the primary to make use of of oranges to struggle scurvy on their world voyages. Because of this, Portugal was rapidly related to oranges to a degree that many Arabic international locations, international locations the place the Portuguese stopped on their voyages to and from India, began naming their oranges for the very title of Portugal, portugalo, an orange.

Now, throughout this Age of Discovery, one of many strategies utilized by Prince Henry’s faculty was the methodical recording of knowledge. That’s, due to this College of Navigation Europe huge, captain logs and minute to minute reporting have been for the primary time launched and have become the usual operation process with the navies of all international locations from then on as much as the current. Every island was, by the decree of the Prince, ruled like an precise ship, by a “Captain Donatory” in control of a Captaincy that noticed to it that the island each was in control of, was rightfully being settled and explored. Mockingly, nevertheless, the key gimmicks plots and intrigue performed by the Templars marked the Age of Discovery as effectively. That’s, whereas all efforts have been made to scientifically, methodically hold monitor of all that was completed and mentioned, when all the knowledge was recorded and shared as no different time earlier than that period, it was additionally a time when a lot info was intentionally withheld or deceptively maneuvered to misguide and mislead if not everybody else, Spain for certain. That was an Age of misleading hide-and-go-seek methods, for which the Portuguese, below the order of Christ, (the Templars in disguise) grew to become the most effective of gamers. It was a Tom and Jerry actuality, the place little Portugal, Jerry, needed to handle itself one of the best ways it might, by means of trickery and clever, even devious scheming; by means of the withholding and altering info for some ulterior finish, unknown at this time.

Columbus, himself, comes throughout as a wily character, one who was fully at house in Portugal, spoke the language, married right into a noble household and was by no means regarded as a foreigner right here in Portugal. When he moved to Spain, he was known as the Portuguese. Nobody ever known as him the Man type Genoa, because it was customary to nickname foreigners these days, like El Greco. He’s even suspected to have been of Jewish-Portuguese ancestry from a Portuguese-Jewish neighborhood within the area Genoa or Livorno, simply to the South of Genoa, in Italy. Some even say that he’s not even that, however that he was a noble from the area of Alentejo, from the city of Cuba in Southern Portugal and that was truly the rationale for his naming one of many islands he found by that very title. He wrote Portuguese and Spanish with a Portuguese aptitude. He by no means used Italian to precise himself, nor did he present any attachment to Genoa in anyway.

So, the historical past of our islands, topic to this dynamics of deception and intrigue, factors to an Age when not every thing was revealed: it was a world the place the highly effective by means of Machiavellian stratagems dominated and the individuals had no selection, no voice, and no proper to the information of the video games that have been being performed on them. In any case, this was additionally the age, when spies, all foreigners, walked the plank or have been despatched to the pyre by the Inquisitors; the individuals have been a rabble with no inborn route and the courtroom and the Church alone decided everybody’s future.

Europe, being in these days a theatre of battle and of fixed turmoil, of knightly forays and spiritual fever, of complete waywardness finest described by H.J. von Grimmelhausen’s The Adventurous Simplicissumus, was a de facto nightmarish state of affairs of many a battle and skirmish, a land of scoundrels, villains, cutthroats, of shrewd Jews- made new Christians, noble scoundrels, and simpleminded rogues in every single place. This was a time of spiritual zeal and roguish attitudes. Deep inside humanity wished out and away from all of it. Right here, these islands in the course of the Atlantic have been the very first hope of escape from the quagmire of the instances, and our individuals have been for probably the most half that submissive rabble majority, interspersed with many a rapacious ruffian, cutthroat or thug, over zealous sailors or sea knights, grasping lords, petty nobles and shrewd foreigners who dared to interrupt away from all of it, and so we stay and are, even at this time.

This was Europe’s very personal “Gold Rush.” It was the Rush of the European Spirit, drained from battle, hungry for change, longing for the lands of desires, of gold and spices, the Far East and India, the unknown frontiers of Prince Henry’s new world. One of many actions of the Flemish after they arrived right here, was precisely to search for diamonds and gold which they thought have been considerable within the Azores.

By way of right here, the Portuguese have been in a position to mount its huge world empire, the primary the place the solar by no means set. It was the Portuguese to actually first attain the Far East, lands of China and Japan, the primary Europeans to decide on lands like Timor and Macao, Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It was by means of the Portuguese Jesuit affect, that Vietnam, for instance, picked up on a phonetic alphabet and the Chinese language set their days of the week numerically beginning with day of the Lord, Sunday after which Second, Third, Fourth and so forth Days, Portugal being the one European nation that does that. It’s due to the affect of each the Portuguese Jews and the Jesuits that Portuguese is at this time, after English and Spanish, the third most spoken European Language of huge world span.

Having in Spain its arch enemy, Portugal’s alliance with England, the oldest and longer European Alliance since 1373, was a actuality even older than Port wine. Prince Henry, himself, was the son of the Home of Lancaster and the king of the Home of Avis. In England the Portuguese discovered their staunch companions and protectors. On the Treaty of Windsor, each international locations renewed the age outdated treaty and promised an everlasting partnership. It was due to that treaty that the Individuals by means of the bequest of England was allowed to open a Base right here on the island of Terceira again within the 1941’s. The Portuguese authorities being a Fascist authorities throughout World Struggle Two, didn’t align with the American presence right here, however the Treaty was specific, and the Fascist authorities bonded to England for defense of Portugal’s personal worldwide empire, had no selection however to bow to England, when England made a particular request that the Individuals are available in. So the Base was established and remains to be right here, and right here is the place I work.

No Man is a continent; we’re all islands, realities that rise from the underside of a typical watery physique that binds us all into one sole actuality that’s the actuality of our planet. Islands, what is going on to us right here on these islands is, the truth is, taking place to the entire world as effectively.

Thus, international tendencies, the gimmicks of the inventory markets and the banks, the cooperative world, play the identical approach the order of Christ did on the Age of Discovery. They’re the brand new Order of the Templars in disguise. We stay a time of non-submissive, self glad, smug lots who entertain themselves on new applied sciences as on toys, have misplaced the flexibility to construct grand desires, comply with greater than lead, stay on a brand new form of folly, one primarily based on the excesses of knowledge that comes type the surface and never from the within of themselves. We’ve misplaced our internal virtuousness and usually are not authentically ourselves any longer, however topic to international tendencies, international schemes, slaves to what others assume and do.

Azoreans, from the Azores, we will make out the define of these new islands within the horizon, as we will inform actuality in our world of mists and everlasting shifting, rise and sinking of lava in these our candy Islands of Mist. From right here we will inform that the entire world is now a brand new Azores actuality, the place no man undoubtedly is a continent. In the course of this new Ocean, we notice now we have reached our very West, and the far East is on; that there are video games being performed on us, the estranged, the indifferent lots. Are we opened-eyed sufficient to select on the video games being performed this time, or will all of us play being a part of the misplaced continent of Atlantis, or is it the sinking of the Titanic?

The world is altering. The query that is still is, “Is this alteration into the globe as we constructed it right here way back, or is right into a flatland on the brim of a fireplace and brimstone world, over again?

It is going to be attention-grabbing to comply with what follows subsequent.

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Source by Silverio DeMelo