Your typical fat fishes
Before you say anything, “fishes” is a valid plural when referring to multiple species of fish.
I’ve held the idea that Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea is the Moby Dick of American literature for a significant part of my life. Perspicacious readers might, incorrectly, deduce that I’m not aware that Herman Melville himself was American, and thus make the mistake of thinking I believe Hemingway’s epic to be an American version of another culture’s famous “Man v.s. Acquatic Behemoth” duel. No. What I’m trying to say is that I’ve understood for a very long time that, given the frequency with and reverence with which “The Old Man and the Sea” is written and spoken about, that this novel is the very white whale of legend that countless American authors, without knowing it, have quite arrogantly tried besting with their literary harpoons.
There’s two things I must point out about what I just wrote. One’s a curiosity, one’s an irony. The curiosity is that my analogy features Moby Dick, the only novel that, to my knowledge, actually competes with The Old Man and the Sea in both legend and plot. After all, they’re both internationally acclaimed American epics where a stubborn and prideful old man fights a marine creature of titanic strength and magnitude to the death. I hope to make it clear, despite the subtitle under which I write, that I’m aware of the fact that whales are mammals. Thanks. Now, the irony is that I’ve never read Moby Dick and, up until a few months ago, I would’ve bet I’d die before reading The Old Man and the Sea.
I have nothing against the classics. In fact, I like to lean on them when I need to be sure that what I read will evoke a profound feeling of success, even if just for a couple of hours. After all, there’s nothing more satisfying than adding a book to my “Read” list, nor is there a safer bet than those titles that have remained in people’s hearts, minds and lips for decades if not centuries. The thing is there’s classics galore and, a title like “The Old Man and the Sea” is only music to the ears paired to eye that have already read the novel.
So, in the full-blown pandemic, the 121st anniversary of Ernest Hemingway’s birth was coming up. The Hemingway Library, in honor of said anniversary and with no care for operating in rounded years (they must have slept on last year, the 120th anniversary), decides to publish a new edition of The Old Man and the Sea, with unpublished letters written by the very hand of the legendary author and some other things that are the perfect bait (pun very much intended) for consumerist bibliophiles like your very own Techincal Boy. Then Amazon, our faithful albeit controversial bookmonger, decides to recommend this edition to me. So I obviously buy it along with two books on Mythology, one greek, one japanese.
While I read The Old Man and the Sea, I did what I do, introspective reflection. I dug the deep dark mine that are my thoughts and often unintelligible feelings, I climbed the cliffs of introspection and, having reached the end of the novel, I took a sip from an empty mug that once overflowed with chamomille tea. I unearthed a precious stone or two in response to the prompts the legendary Hemingway posthumously threw in my direction. Speaking of gems, it’s funny how Santiago’s titanic clash with the marlin evoked memories of watching Uncut Gems, that recent Safdie brothers’ film. Pure anxiety and cardiace episodes. Loved the movie, will never rewatch it. Just take if from me, dear reader.
Anyway, I bagged most of those unearthed gems I mentioned and saved them for later. They’re some other foreman’s treasure. The most valuable thing ole Hemingway and I unearthed, and what I bring to this essay-ish piece, is a big ol’ piece of coal. Large, heavy, cumbersome and mundane. All these adjectives have undeniably negative connnotations, but if there’s anything coal has proven, is it’s effective fuel and, after a year-long writing hiatus, fuel is what I needed. And yes, I swear that’s the last mining metaphor in this text.
Illiads and Odysseys
I must further delay my most personal reflection to point out an interesting parallel that emerged from my analysis of the novel in question. The historical context of the decades around the publishing of The Old Man and the Sea were such that the novel works as an attractive narrative, as interesting as it is beautiful, without being coupled to its times. Each reader’s focus will be unique, but decade after decade, most people would have agreed that the most important moment in the story would’ve been the marathonic struggle between the fish and the old guy. Ever since Hemingway wrote the book, most of the value in reading it has come from experiencing his extended narration of the duel between the will of a stubborn old fool and a legendarily non-relenting pointy-faced fish.
And yes, when isolated and compared to the other parts, the novel’s climax is certainly the main selling point. The rest of the story maintains a laudible level of consistent beauty and importance, but the bellicose sequence is clearly the main event. Had I read the novel a year ago, that’s what I would’ve been more impressed by, the war.
Having read The Old Man and the Sea in the point of my life I find myself in, with the global context we unavoidably find ourselves surviving through, the stars aligned themselves to produce a unique set of circumstances that transformed The Old Man and the Sea into some sort of echo of Homer’s epics. I guess it’s not groundbreaking to suggest one may divide The Old Man and the Sea into an Illiad and an Odyssey, but my point is I was better positioned to appreciate the return trip Santiago made than the war he fought against the fish.
After Ulysses emerged victorious from the Troyan war in the Illiad and Santiago came out on top against the Marlin on his little boat, they both set sail back home under the arrogant albeit innocent impression that they’d already lived through the hardest part. Then, the Odyssey and Santiago’s return trip both showed us how cruel the ocean, that is to say, la Mar, really is. This is where I was better able to relate. That’s what I’ll talk about.
The Young Man and the Quarantine
“The Young Man and the Quarantine”. You’ll forgive in this occasion, merciful reader, that I so unabashedly abuse the old journalistic trick of exchanging the subjects of my inspiration (“old” and “sea”) and leaving only the articles and conjunctions (“the” and “and” respectively) in a way that serves my thesis to generate an attractive title. My excuse is that I am, in fact, young and I am, in fact, quarantined. Just like la Mar stole the old man’s precious marlin, piece by piece, the quarantine is, a day at a time, stealing my youth.
I firmly hold that it is the reader’s responsibility to appropriate the narrative and come to own it. Consequently, my intention over others’ narratives is to internalize them to a degree at which it is difficult for me to separate my memories of reading them from the memories of my opwn that were evoked while reading them. In this case, I could not help but live through the grief of Santiago, the story’s eponymous old man, while he, with impotence, observed as nature cruelly and gradually took back the price he’d earned through his hunger, sweat and blood.
Those close to me will know that in April, when we thought the need for a quarantine would cease soon, I started a new chapter in my life that involved me moving to a different country. The prospect of starting from scratch, of building something of my own, of transplanting my entire life into a country with a non-negligible portion of the population who have made it clear I am not welcome, looked to me to be a challenge as enormous and energizing as hooking that marlin was to Santiago. I struggled with the idea of separating myself from my family, my friends, my city, my country, and my whole life the whole four and a half years I spent in college. When the time to make the choice came, I was beyond ready.
Setting Sail
Trying to aline my recent experience with the plot of The Old Man and the Sea as much as organically possible, I think the intense battle between the old guy and the marlin, my own Illiad, would then be those four and a half years where I struggled with the decision of taking a job in a different country. Just like the old man and unlike the ancient greek invading force, I spent most of those four and a half years with the upper hand. I made the decision to come work in the US at some point during my freshman year of college, a long time before I even had a job offer or even an internship at an american company. I maintained my conviction generally all through college.
As is to be expected of a decision made about five years in advance, there were moments when my conviction was too fragile and the will of the marlin representing the alternate decision (staying in Mexico after college) recovered some line (in terribly worded fishing terms).
At the beginning of my last college semester, I signed a job offer with the company I now work at in the US, harpooning that old marlin in the heart once and for all. The decision was made and the battle, which prolonged itself for years, was over. I along with my conviction came out on top. I graduated less than six months after that, with a 1500 lbs marlin tied to my little boat, ready to victoriously make port (in the US in my case).
What was my 1500 lbs marlin? I guess it was some combination of the achievement those of us who graduate college like to attribute to ourselves, the prospect of taking a highly-coveted engineering spot at one of the world’s largest and most lucrative tech company, and the simple intention of going off and living life with unprecedented intensity in a different country. It was all sorts of plans and expectations. Infinite possibilities and people to meet, experiences to live and adventures to put on paper.
Like Santiago, I hoisted my sails and trusted that the lights of Havana would eventually appear over the horizon. In my case, that was the city of Atlanta, where I had my layover. I embarked on what I didn’t know would become my own Odyssey.
March 13th of the present year (2020), in an excess of caution (which turned out not to be excessive), I cancelled my birthday/going away party because of a pandemic that had not yet reached my hometown or even country. Said action was, in my part, the equivalent of Santiago’s first becoming aware that between him and the coast of Havana there were miles and miles of open sea, hunger, thirst and countless vicious sharks. Santiago and I emerged victorious from a battle, but were immediatley invaded by a notion of impending tragedy.
Surviving the sharks
The old man and I both had plenty of sharks to deal with. Perhaps, appropriately, one for every year Ulysses spent returning to Ithaca. Each shark I faced merits its own entry in this blog, so sadly I won’t be able to go into detail with each one. There are things I don’t feel qualified to discuss because, although they happened around me, they were not about me. I’m also not interested in speaking of everything that has happened since I started my Odyssey.
The Sharks of Air Travel
The first shark, which in a single bite voratiously mutilated my fat fish, presented itself in the form and face of Delta Airlines, who cancelled one of the flights in my April 15th itinerary. It was a three flight trip.
MTY->CDMX
CDMX->LAX
LAX->SEA
I can’t even remember which of the three flights was cancelled. I immediately Twitter DM-ed the airline and changed my itinerary. It was still three flights in one day, but on a Friday instead of a Wednesday. Delta offered to rebook me for free as well as credit me for the (considerable) price difference.
I killed that shark with my trusty tweet-at-customer-support harpoon but lost the harpoon itself in the process since taking the new booking and airline credit meant I couldn’t further cancel my flight. Had I decided not to make the trip, I would’ve lost that money. All things said I still had about 1400 lbs of marlin on me, not all was lost.
Then came the second, third and fourth shark, they all looked like the first and came very close to each other. Delta changed my itinerary about three times in four days. I considered postponing the trip and my start date at this new job until the pandemic ended or more stable times came. Sharks had already stolen a good third of my total marlin, leaving me about 500 lbs. La Mar (Hemingway says real seamen refer to the ocean in that way) was trying to tell me something. It put serious doubt in me.
Then I remembered I don’t believe in that cheesy “signs from the universe” stuff and made the executive decision of making my trip happen much sooner rather than later, stabbing that fifth shark in the brain with my only knife, like Santiago did, losing said knife as a result.
The trip was now scheduled to be about a week sooner than planned, and I picked the itinerary least likely to get changed, really hoping I could avoid being stranded on some airport in the midst of a global state of emergency. My new itinerary was stable, MTY->CDMX, CDMX->ATL, ATL->SEA. Three flights with routes that fly daily and have a high demand, making them unlikely to get cancelled. The problem is that the ATL->SEA flight happened the morning after the CDMX->ATL flight. I’ll get to that particular megalodon in a bit.
I packed my bags, weighed them, angrily pulled out a few books I didn’t want to leave behind, weighed them again and repeated the terrible process until my bags were compliant with airline restrictions. I didn’t need to risk anything going wrong in this post-apocalyptic trip.
Guess who’s bags didn’t even get weighed at the counter? Right. I said goodbye to my family at the Mariano Escobedo International Airport of the City of our Lady of Monterrey, stomach in knots and all, and told myself, in the immortal words of VH1’s Divas Live’s Shaniah Twain:
Let’s go girls.
The trip was weird. Wait times seemed eternal, the airport gates were empty. Luckily by then everyone was worrying now mandatory face masks. Everything was closed, food service now meant vending machines and OXXOs/7-11s. If I recall correctly, Starbucks was open, praised be the Coffee Gods. If I do remember correctly and it was open, you can bet your ass, affable reader, that I bough a Venti cold brew and I drank it like there wasn’t a violently lethal virus being spread from lung-to-lung all accross this here planet.
Atlanta and the Megalodon
Two flights later, I arrive at the City of Atlante with the sun still visible on the blue skies of the peachy-keen state of Georgia. Everything went well in my short interview with Immigration and Passport Control, until the CBP agent asked if I had anything to declare. I said no like usual, but then he listed some of the stuff that would need to be declared. You can imagine my face when he said “Pork products” and I remembered the four ham sandwiches my dad packed for me before I left, you know, in case no food was being sold at the airports.
I snitched on myself, as only someone with severe moral perfectionism would, risking everything as not to be caught in a lie. Facing immediate deportation as I was sure to get, CBP agent laughed a bit and looked at me like a teacher would when I shenaniganned as a child (and a college-aged adult of course), and called a customs agent to escort me to baggage claim and take my declaration. Customs officer, with empathy and an offer of condolences in his face, dropped my sandwich bag in a cold, boring, black waste bin that had previously remained empty, because I’m the only idiot flying with pork in a pandemic. My man, however, did not forget to smile and say “Welcome to the United States of America” less than half a second after disposing of my sammies.
I reached the hotel where I’d made my reservation ahead of time, picked up my room key and took a few takeout menus from the front-desk. I lost my sammies, remember? It was Hot-lanta in April, so I turned on the AC to an environmentally disgusting low temperature. After about half an hour of looking at the take out menus, I remembered I just finished a three month strict-ass diet and pulled my phone out to Uber Eats me some McDonald’s like one would in the 21st century. Double QP with Cheese, large meal, supersize me, I have a lot of anxiety that needs to be smothered in fast food. Glory.
When I ran out of fries and bedtime rolled around, I started to think about the worst-case scenarios:
- I’d sleep through my alarm and lose my flight
- I’d wake up to the news that my flight and all subsequent flights to Seattle would’ve been cancelled indefinitely
- I’d wake up coughing or feverish, unable to get on an airplane and leaving myself stranded with COVID-19 in a city where I knew no one and had no safety net, in a country where medical expenses tend to bankrupt people, before my medical insurance kicked in
And so, I fell asleep with a brain overflowing with intrusive thoughts. Almost immediately.
My brain didn’t like that. It woke me up abruptly less than an hour later. I didn’t know who I was, where I was, or why I was so damn cold. I also didn’t know why my chest felt heavy, or why I couldn’t breathe. It took me close to a minute to figure out the hieroglyphs I saw on the alarm clock next to the bed. When I made out the time, I became overwhelmed by anxiety. It was 10:30. Mi flight was scheduled for 8:00 AM. It took a minute longer for me to realize that, luckily, the clock read 10:30PM of the same day, my flight being scheduled for 8:00 AM of the next day.
The immediate dread abandoned my body as I realized I hadn’t lost my flight, but there was something worse going on. The anguish and residual anxiety from the three worst case scenarios had burrowed itself in my brain and incubated itself while my conscious mind lay with it’s guard low, that is, while I was asleep.
The biggest shark of all, a Megalodon of sorts, took, all by itself, about 400 lbs of what was left of my treasured marlin. Like any shark would, this particular specimen had multiple rows of teeth.
The first row of teeth that stabbed the scaly skin of my marlin was hyperventilation. I had a deep feeling of anguish and anxiety that was second only to a feeling of breathlessness. What was it that was causing breathlessness in thousands of people? I was sure I’d contracted COVID. I tried to breathe deeply, but could only achieved breathing quickly.
The second row of teeth that tore into my marlin was the tight chest. Heart attack? At 24? Unlikely. With this new virus? In my mind? Definitely, without a doubt.
I became aware of the rest of my body. The third row of teeth bit in, losing feeling in my legs. Normally I wouldn’t worry, but I was recently diagnosed with a concerningly elevated resistence to insulin (the reason for my strict dietary changes). This condition tends to lead to Type-2 Diabetes, so naturally my thoughts went straight to neuropathy and diabetic leg. I’ve watched enough House M.D. and Grey’s Anatomy to have the horror stories memorized.
Each new row of teath brought weirder and less-probable problems. In that split-second I fundamentally believed every worst-case scenario had come to pass. Every irrational concern I had and every fear I had previously brought under control had manifested in a single instant. I was convinced.
The worst part? This was all happening late at night, in a hotel room I found myself alone in, smack-dab in the middle of a global health crisis, hundreds of miles from my closest acquaintance, with no active source of income or medical insurance to speak of, in a country where calling an ambulance, even in a real emergency, would cost me every penny I’d ever saved.
First call I shamefully made was to my dad. I didn’t want to worry him, there was nothing he could do a whole country away, but I imagined he’d be more inconvenienced if he had to find out about my imminent hospitalization from the authorities. My ever-loving father, evidently preocuppied with my international migration, picked up the phone before the first ring was done. He assured me everything was alright, he explained this was all in my head and this shark was neither COVID, nor a heart attack, nor type-2 Diabetes, which I already knew but still needed to hear.
In his limited experience as a marine biologist that specialized in dolphins rather than sharks (that is to say, a plastic surgeon rather than a psychiatrist), what I was describing sounded to him like one of two much better known and frequently interchanged types of sharks.
That night I exprienced my first anxiety or panic attack, or maybe both since some people think they’re the same thing.
I gave him all of my hotel and flight information in case anything happened and he needed to check in on me. I promised to call him if anything else happened, to let him know when I woke up the next day, when I got to the airport, when I landed in Seattle and when I got to my friend’s apartment, where I’d be staying for a couple of weeks before I moved into my own apartment in the city.
I hung up the phone and immediately made a second call. This time to my older sister, who happens to be an admirable, well-trained psychologist who, in my experience, was extremely likely to be able to diagnose whatever I had just gone through. I wasn’t looking for her to solve my problems in any permanent way, your sister can’t be your therapist, you know?
Still, I called her, in part just to hear her voice reassuring me that everything was going to be alright, letting it calm me down. In part because I wanted some advice on how to overcome the next 15 hours, or specifically, the time between my first anxiety attack and reaching the city, when I would feel like I was “on the other side” of this problem.
Truly, calling my dad and my sister where the oar, the last line of defense that Santiago used to scare away the rest of the sharks. My families’ voices were enough that I could keep a small piece of my marlin for a while longer. I didn’t have a 15000 lbs marlin, but I had just enough for dinner.
Sighting the lights of Havana
My last flight went without a hitch. I reached Sea-Tac safely, got on an uber and headed to the city, finally feeling like I made it to the other side. As the Space Needle emerged from between the other members of the Seattle skyline, the lights of Havana where finally on my sights.
I spent my two weeks in quarantine in a good friend’s smal apartment. He was great company, and surely, not having to spend those two weeks alone was great for the both of us. I spent my then unemployed time drawing, watching television, reading and hanging out with my friend. In those days I still held on to a few hundred pounds of the mighty fish, safely tied to the end of that little boat that separated me from “La Mar”.
I anxiously awaited the day when I’d officially begin my life in this semi-new city. A new job in the big leagues of the tech world. There were so many people to meet, so many problems to solve, so much life to live. Four hundred pounds of marlin were still more than enough to feed a small village. Not a record-breaking catch, but a good catch indeed.
The lights of Havan were at arm’s reach, but there was still some ocean between them and me.
I moved into my new apartment with a friend from college. I started my new job that same week.
It all went well at first, I was invigorated and convinced that everything would soon get back to normal.
The Sharks of the Socio-political landscape
As I tried to adapt to self-isolated life in a new country, a whole different set of problems that did not belong to me came into (inter)national focus. The streets surrounding my semi-luxurious apartment building were the setting of a series of protests against police brutality and systematic racism that were still going on by the time I originally published this post in spanish.
The city streets that surrounded me became the battlefield where a new movement sought to materialize civil rights that had supposedly been acquired half a century before, but I was categorically disqualified from participating. It was an issue where I had neither voice nor vote, taking over my surroundings day in and day out.
In more than one occasion, while I observed the protests from my fifth-floor balconay, some protester would point directly at me and chant:
Out of your home and into the street
How could I explain, from my balcony and undeniable privilege, that the right to peaceably assemble was only inaliable to them and not me. That I had no real agency in the exercise of political or social change. That I was relegated to passivity as a glorified tourist in a country where I paid rent and taxes.
April turned into May. May into June. The protests persisted and the heat became a niusance in a city so historically cold that most apartment buildings have no air conditioning capabilities. The long days, the insufferable nights. Sleep? Entirely out of reach.
I realized something. Ever since that first anxiety attack in Atlanta, bedtime was to me a frightening prospect. Every night, I struggle against anguish, insomnia, anxiety and fear. Fear that my brain will once again betray me. Of waking up, as has become the norm, in an electrostatic cloud of confusion and disidentity. Of not knowing who I am or how I got here. Fear of not knowing when this will all be over and whether my problems will outlive this pandemic.
Now, that is September, the west coast of the United States of America is suffering through multiple massive forest fires of a magnitude that is difficult to conceptualize. As I write this, purely yellow light penetrates my bedroom window in the city of Seattle, a frequent contender in the top 5 cities with the “cleanest air” in the USA.
The light coming through my window is yellow because the smoke emerging from the forest fires has blanketed the city and robbed all the blue out of the sunlight.
It seems like every day is a new opportunity for the world, “La Mar”, to remind us of how cruel it is and how impotent we are against it’s whims.
Before I reach the coast, the sharks take the last of my marlin.
Making port
The nocturnal lights of Havana proved to be further away from me than I imagined. I thought I was close to beaching but it turns out I’m not. When all of this is over and the pandemic becomes a previous chapter, I’ll make port like Santiago eventually did. With the bare skeleton of a 1500 lbs beast tied to the end of a little boat. With only as much as a marlin head to make fish stock out of, a spear-like marlin snout to gift those I care about and a marlin tail that tourists will undoubtedly point at and remark “Huh, did’t know sharks had tails like that one” (yeah I didn’t get that part either).
On papaer, I caught a 1500 lbs marin against all odds. I took the biggest step I have yet taken in the darkest and most challenging times I have ever lived through. I beat the great beast without much apparent loss. I’ll be able to tell the story for years to come, feigning pride and satisfaction.
Anyone who’s read the Old Man and the Sea knows that it’s a story with triumphant moments, pride and significant realization. What it is most definitely not, is a story with a happy ending. The ending is bitter, it tastes like loss and existential dread. What is the point of hooking such a massive beast when “La Mar” sends its sharks to strip all the flesh from it? Sure, Santiago earned the respect of every fisherman around. The size of the skeleton will serve as evidence of his great accomplishment.
To Santiago that is meaningless. He resigns, relieves himself of any trophy to remind him of his herculean task, giving away everything he managed to salvage, and goes straight to bed. Sometimes it is easier to yield to unconsciousness than to have to exist in the same world where we lost what we had to lose.
Up to now, the pandemic has stolen months, maybe more than a year, of my life and youth. It took all novelty, excitement and satisfaction from one of the most important achievements of my life. It took all the flesh from my fish. “La Mar” left me with the corpse of a dream that I had the cruel opportunity to just barely taste before it was torn away from my hands. What should have been a glinting trophy, life turned into a memento of what I lost. With this feeling of loss, I find myself to have underachieved against Santiago. At least he got to sleep.
I am just unable.
Having said al this, I’m aware of how lucky I have been. My wounds, though real, appear to be limited to the superficial.
I think that’s the worst part.
Vent with me
The past few months (years as of this translation) have been tough. Regretably, they persist. Take a load off, tweet at me [@hectormgio]((https://twitter.com/hectormgio) or email me. If you feel this entry can be interesting or helpful to someone you know, share it on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn using the buttons below. If you like the blog in general, recommend it to your friends!
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