I've never had a big relationship with islands, nor have I ever lived close to one. I was 10 when I was spending holidays at the Praia das Maçãs, at a friend's house. One day her parents decided to go to Berlenga Grande. A chance event.
This first island is a conjunction of emotions. It is not a lost island in my memories or a stage for adventures. I think of it as an amalgam of raw earth, well mashed by the wind over time. An enormous concentration of energy. Raw nature. Convex, the positive of a lake, poles that attract and diffuse.
Isolated from the world and the way to arrive there. Wild ocean on a windy day, vomiting, nausea, I'm stuck in the departure and then finally the arrival. Surprised, I forget the nausea: the ocean is like a lake. Such a blue green, transparent, transparent. In the end, what I most remember is the water, not the land. On the land that I remember you can't see a living soul, almost everything is rock and at the water's edge endless grottoes. Entering a grotto a distinct world: it's limpid and echoing, even in the dark the bottom of the ocean can be seen. As if you'd returned to your mother's womb. And the fish,
many, many. Small, flowering seaweed. You could almost catch them with your hand.
This stayed in my memory and I never again returned.
The second island was that of Madeira. Twelve years later. Just one time and the opposite of the first. While bigger than the Berlenga, everything seemed small to me, even the people. The tight streets of Funchal and inside the island, the narrow roads full of curves. Going by car an adventure.
From what I remember of the land, less rock, but also there. And the water running and the natural lakes in the rock. Of the people, this "úe" that I retain in my hearing and, maybe the result of the tightness of the streets, a huge desire to cross the redundant ocean to the continent.
This is the history I have with real islands. In relation to the others, clouds condense and rain falls. In the form of philosophical ideals, searching for meanings with and without meaning, in poetry, in trains of thought. Fly and life comes.