Sea allegory

Country: Spain

Manufactory: Lladro

Date of establishment: 2003

Sculptor: Miguel Angel Santaeulalia

Size (cm): 39*32

Porcelain Story

Every week I swim my next five kilometers. For many years in a row, almost daily (more precisely, five times a week) I have been, sort of, sailing from the Atlantic coast of America towards Europe. First I swam to America, and now I'm going back. All this, of course, is quite arbitrary. Indeed, for more than twenty years of regular swimming, circumstances have developed differently. There were gaps associated with some unforeseen injuries. And there were periods of continuous, for 15-20 days in a row, overcoming the depths of the sea several kilometers per day.

In total, over the years, according to rough estimates, I swam more than six thousand kilometers. It's not that I am only so much proud of it (there is nothing special to be proud of, if we compare this modest achievement with the results of swimmers swimming thousands of kilometers a year), but it will spur on the obligatory continuation of the conceived idea - now to return to the shores of Europe. And these are years of regular swimming.

For those who are familiar with this hobby, it is easy to explain what it means to spend 30-40 minutes every day (depending on how you feel) in the water alone. Sometimes alone with the real sea element, which picks you up with its uncontrollable force, soars up on the crest of a cold wave to the height of an observation tower, and then abruptly throws you into a gloomy sea crevice, when from the maximum depth of the fall you, greedily trying to grab a breath of air, see high above you only one sky. No shore, no horizon... And no one around - just you and the elements.

But how many joyful minutes can give a lonely early (at 5-6 o'clock in the morning) swimming far into the sea on the eve of sunrise! When you just feel with all your being that the appearance of a huge bright luminary, slowly floating over the sea surface, is dedicated to you alone. And no one else ... Hundreds of times I have seen and felt it off the coast of Singapore, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Spain, Malta, Australia, New Zealand, Tunisia, Indonesia and many other countries on different continents. And I thanked the Lord thousands of times for the incomparable happiness of being alone with the elements and alone with myself. And with Water - one of the best interlocutors that a thinking person can only imagine.

By the way, I bought this beautiful porcelain composition in Portugal, off the coast of which I was also lucky to meet the sunrise far into the sea more than once ...