Jacques, the marina man.

“I am what I am, and that's all that I am…

and if I'm supposed to be somebody else, why do I look like me?”

Benjamin Franklin

Well in that note I must say I am one enthusiastic car driver, regularly enjoying the elevating freedom coming from a windows-down, music-up, highway-deep & piston-frenzy… thirsty metal machine.

Together we bend time and rip space along the hypnotic yellow lines of serpentine roads. And if you rest your ear against the warm asphalt, you might hear the echoes of our havoc or smell the skid marks of our laughter.

It cannot be a surprise then that such a wonderful -but volatile- equation, made from tangible -but ephemeral- constants, would eventually transpose itself into its opposing complement: the art of steering a boat across the tides of lakes, rivers and seas. Mathematically put, different bodies made instead of variables.

Behind the wheel of a furious roadster, I can forcibly accelerate towards my destiny, shrinking or extending time, almost pulling the unknown with my bare hands, by the throat, right into my face.

In a boat though, the fury is not the same. But here hides the question, the reward in both is strikingly similar.

When steering a boat, the addictive novelty of the world “presents” itself to me without the slightest coercion, in the most convincing way.

On the water I could be physically moving forward but truth is, I am not truly in control. In the water the words “control” and “forward” do not have the same understanding, they might even be conceptually irrelevant. It seems to me that when over water, we are already in a sublime state where there is nothing left to understand anymore.

The utter immensity of a mass of water, right below our feet, invites us to happily surrender to whatever the future brings ahead without the always frustrating burden of decision.

On the ground, above mountains of soil, we are encouraged to go find that future. There is a sense of fire on solid ground, a sense of urgency. On moving waters, the notions of urgency and time quietly numb themselves into faraway memories.

Yet, as opposite feelings as land and water can awake, the emotion and the freedom coming from both meet at the quintessential crossroad; the traveling experience is supremely humane.

Could it be that land represents the masculine and water the feminine?

Maybe land is meant to ignite our intellect -our electric impulse to expand- while water help us find inner peace through contraction into ourselves.

There seems to be a very subtle spell in-between, the allure coming from both is undeniable and fulfilling.

Thought after thought, in a car and a vessel we develop a magnetic cliff-type of relationship with the width and the unknown of the open horizon ahead.

A very quiet, personal and discreet pull, one you can feel inside the chest, synchronizing immediately with the heart, inviting you to welcome this special alchemy.

But for now, to me, the purpose of either magnetic pull that remains a mystery.

Be it difficult to decipher, be it also absolutely natural… and why not; be it shoeless, with a full head of messy hair, consistently beat down by the sun.

Calmly approaching and waving, walking along the pier of a marina, in the southern end of Montreal, on a sunny spring afternoon and taking full human form.

Extending his right hand to greet me, smiling… as I later found most experienced boatmen would do the minute they spot an improvised amateur (me) about to undock for the first time, right next to their precious boats. 

That magnetic pull I was monologuing before… well it has now the sweetest name for me, his name is Jacques, and he is a marina man.

Hardto know his age, anywhere between 20 and 55 and from afar he looks a lot like Iggy Pop, not that it matters. He’s my poster boat guy who gladly came to my rescue before I crashed every single boat on my way out of the marina to test the waters.

No shirt, no shoes and specially no shame… a pure universal confluence of tarnished evolution, with a benefactor-God type of character, tanned like a lobster.

There is something transcendental about Jacques. He makes me think of surfers, beach bums and their very relaxed demeanor... but with the solemnness of a Greek philosopher. Jacques has a deep superfluous stance.

He is just there with all the gravity and levity a man can muster. How to explain it… as if he carried centuries of wisdom without the slightest clue, completely oblivious to his own magnitude to an almost irritating point, if his karma was not that perfectly symphonic.

As it happens, just a week before I met Jacques, I had bought a small speedboat out of sheer boredom. The boat came with a space in that Marina for the reminder of the summer.

The evening before meeting Jacques I passed the 3-hour boat-permit test, so the following afternoon I would be ready to take the boat for my first spin. How hard could it be I asked myself.

Jacques had seen me undocking and quickly came over. Few minutes later he had his toolkit with him and patiently begun to show me, step by step, everything I needed to do before leaving dock. A whole lot of stuff.

At one point he took a flat screwdriver and begun adjusting the engine’s rpm down to a sweet 1000. It just has to be right Alberto, it has to be right… He then smiled and proceeded to tell me “don’t forget Alberto, neutral is your best friend, neutral is your best friend”.

Fucking Jaques was a whole one-man show. I find characters like Jacques always repeat their sentences, as if they know their lives are full-fledged movies they need to do justice to.

Finally one hour later we found ourselves out of the marina heading for the Saint-Laurence corridor. Jacques had offered me to tag along and teach me some tricks. I was all in.

Admiring Montreal from the Saint-Lawrence is magical. Such an eclectic city with so much history, specially during a warm sunny afternoon when the sunrays travel through the downtown citiscape. It was altogether an unforgettable afternoon, specially when I managed to get to boat skipping fast, which was not easy at the beginning. 

You see, I was having trouble leveling the boat to a horizontal position and getting it to full speed. A minor detail for experienced boat guys, but not easy for an amateur. The stupid boat permit test had nothing on it. Well you have to ambiguously play with the angle of the engine’s helix (the tilt) and the boat’s speed.

When you begin to accelerate, the boat tilts high-up at bow (the front)  but once you master the tilt/speed combination, the boat’s tilt levels horizontally and then is when exhilaration begins.

I was trying different tilt/speed combinations to no avail while Jacques mumbled instructions sitting behind me with open arms and legs, enjoying the sun with a big smile… More speed Alberto, less tilt, less tilt, with the premonition that regardless, all my efforts would be fruitless.

No way man! there is something wrong with this crappy boat I told Jacques, who immediately sprung up and said hold on, I’ll show you how it’s done, just sit down.

Jacques stood at the wheel like a golden French-Canadian gladiator and pushed the engine’s lever all the way down without hesitation like a caveman, the RPM’s jacked immediately, the boat went almost vertical and my soul fell to immediately come back.  

Jacques begun calibrating the tilt button, he looked like he was taming a mustang in Arizona, but soon enough the boat’s bow begun to lower as we gained speed and voila, we started skipping cutting the tide like mad Max.

What a sincerely wonderful moment. The realization we were literally levitating on water. The realization that I was -still- a child and that I was then exactly at the right place, at the right time and at the truest center of my life; which funnily enough, we always happen to be! But we rarely notice.

So after the adrenaline blast, I asked Jacques if the boat was fine or not.

He kept looking ahead, in the center of his own world I suppose, and said to me something I will never forget. An image I will gladly take forever with me and share with you.

A moment I am dissecting with this short story so I can eventually understand it, proceed to remove all the idiotic conceptual jargon we always narcotize ourselves with, and then like a scientist, extract the essence, just the music. The music that will one day take the form of a sculpture… if it chooses to become one.  

What he said, he said it in French-Canadian slang and its very hard to translate his take:

“Ca va ben, ca va ben en tabarnac…”

Which could be loosely understood as Yep, it’s good, it’s fucking good. But add a long and deep intonation.

His smile though, it was permanent. It did not have the weight of the past nor the emptiness of the future. It had the warmest peace, it had no fear, as if God had descended himself from the skies and placed his enormous golden thumb on Jacques’ forehead.

Through his smile and his half-closed eyes, I noticed Jacques had already visited that type of Nirvana, this was not a first experience for him by any means. The symbiosis between water and sun, constantly electrifying his life in the most organic way had been nourishing him forever. I vividly felt next to me, a life form in an exalted communion with the divine.

I could argue then that when we truly reduce ourselves to the moment, when we abandon time, space and their silly chimeras… then is we expand without limits and that expansion is nothing short of glorious. And this makes absolute sense.

Perhaps in either a car or a boat, the magnetic pull I mentioned before, is just there to help us levitate and exalt. It is nothing but a whispering invitation to reach the state of “rausch”, the seductive german concept for… natural out-wordly exaltation?

Perhaps the cliff is explicitly there to see if we dare to jump into the unknown, so we can all one day, leave our shirts, shoes and shame behind, just like my like my dear friend Jacques.

Just like my dear friend Jacques.

…………………