Not too old. Not too Young. He has the sea in his eyes; tiny, dark, smart eyes encircled with wrinkles and a mouth with little, stained, smoker’s teeth. The seaman without a boat. He has the sea on the look: an obscure horizon full with waves; and a sea foam beard. He has the wind and the net; he has the wish and the hope; he has the heart, the strength… but he has no longer a fishing boat, and not anymore a way to survive their own life. Always facing the Wall of water. The cage that is not Golden anymore. The sea that as a third dimension fools his senses with a fake feeling of freedom, amplitude, vastness… of absence of limits and borders… That’s why they are so precious, the seamen. Not only because they are able to swim against the current like salmons, nor because they break the waves but because they have seen the end.

They reached the abyss of the flat Earth where all the sea water flows and spills into a waterfall. They have looked into the eyes of those fierce and legendary creatures; they have lost their ships and their nets. They have poured their blood; they have witnessed the end of the world and the darkness , that is finite, and that is what they carry in their eyes: instead of the deepness of the ocean, they keep the certainty of the end. The non plus ultra. Even worse, maybe.

Certain seamen like Mourat Baker have their souls floating over the waves, or they get stuck into the nets, not even taking the bait. Some of them have left their spirit over there, blending into the sea foam while other broken corpses remain stranded on the shore; like death fish that the water had thrown out. Remains of a shipwreck without survivors. Certain seamen, thought, get their skin covered with sand and seagrass; they take the oars in their hands, maybe a boat, and they look for a tidal wave that will take them further than never before.

Perhaps to the place where the abyss looks deeper, so dark that it gets mix up with the night creating a vertical corridor that will help them to ride out one chasm after another, trusting only the net of starlight baits above them in the sky. Mourat got a shot. Now he looks towards the sea with nostalgia and sadness. He spends the day in the pier, under the sun, roasting sardines that he didn’t caught, drinking a tea that he cannot afford, getting tanned with a sun that won’t leave a salty taste in his lips. Being a seaman without a boat.