When an interview becomes a narration
Welcome back, everyone!
I hope you enjoyed the first part of this interview with Joe.
If you missed it, you can read it here.
There’s still a lot to learn from him, so grab yourself a coffee, a tea, or whatever makes you comfortable and enjoy!
I was waiting for Joe to return to his seat and move on with his story. The bar was now almost empty; the guests were slowly returning to their rooms and a piece of relaxing music was now filling the silence left by the people behind them.
I was watching my empty glass, making a parallel between Joe’s life and mine.
They couldn’t be farther from each other. Before my 30s, the only travels I had made were mainly business transfers. By then, he had seen half of the world.
In the meantime, Joe was sitting again at the table, ready to continue.
“Ok, so, I was talking about the London period.
Through my photographic work and my connection to a model agency, I was introduced to a fashion model whom I eventually married and with whom I had my one and only daughter. Once married, we left the London life behind and moved to Windsor, in Berkshire. I remember that, from my kitchen window, I could clearly see Windsor Castle, and I jokingly told my friends that I could see Queen Elizabeth every morning when she went to the Royal Bathroom.”
This made me laugh really loud.
“Oh dear! That’s funny! I can now see the picture right in front of my eyes!
So wow, you married a model!”
“Yeah, my marriage began with great expectations, for both of us. But, sadly, the ‘baggage’ that my wife carried with her from a past life became heavier and uglier as the years went on. I knew there was a deep-seated issue, but I honestly believed I could overcome it.
In 1988, in an attempt to salvage our crumbling relationship, we made the decision to leave the UK and move to the far shores of Western Australia. We settled in a small country town called Kojonup, population 2800. A far cry from the bustle of London or Windsor.
The isolation did not cure the problems, only hid them from the world.
Work of course was scarce there, so I had to adapt to my environment. I began to clean windows for local businesses, which eventually became a cleaning business that included the local Supermarket as well as the local Catholic School. Money was tight, but survivable.
The insulation from the world changed my wife, and not for the better. I did my best to hide our problems from the locals, but, over time, rumours became rife about the ‘crazy English woman’.”
I was silently listening to the story. And I’m always surprised about how little we know about people until we start scratching the surface.
“After 8 years there, we decided to move to the capital, Perth. But after a few years there, nothing improved. Trying to support my family financially and emotionally was having a devastating effect on me. I worked as a cleaner during the night and as a realtor during the day.
I often went with little sleep, but I survived. After moving from one suburb to another, to get away from the gossip of our tumultuous relationship we once again packed our bags and moved far away.
I was attempting to hold a doomed marriage from falling totally into anarchy.
So, in 1999, we moved to Sydney. I reconciled with my parents and siblings as best as I could, and once again tried to establish some semblance of normality. At first, it appeared to be working, but it did not take long for the old, well-known problems to resurface. Thinking that city living was the cause, we once again uprooted ourselves and moved to a place that, despite my personal circumstances, I found to be a place of incredible spirituality and immeasurable beauty: Katoomba, in The Blue Mountains.
This was the beginning of my salvation.
After 6 more years of desperately attempting to hold on to an ever more liquefying marriage, we separated.
This was her idea, she felt she could do better, and I eagerly agreed.
I walked away completely bankrupt, financially, physically, and emotionally, but still alive.”
I can hardly imagine the pain and the heaviness one can feel in the heart when life throws in such difficult situations. I was listening to Joe’s story and I immediately felt empathic, as if sharing the suffering could somehow make it lighter.
“For the next two years, I worked as a night shift worker restocking shelves in a supermarket. A soul-destroying job, but I was happy because I was free. I slowly began to recover my inner self and settled into a simple but safe routine.
This is where I began to once again take up photography as well as my writing. Social network sites like MySpace and Facebook were integral in my rebirth. Showcasing my photos and writings to a positive response encouraged me and pushed me to dwell even further into my pain, and I kept writing more and more, spilling all my anger, frustrations, and hope on paper.
My poetry by then was my therapy and my voice.
In 2011 I decided to follow a dream I’ve had since childhood: to live and work in Antarctica.”
“Oh my God! Antarctica! I cannot even think of that. I can’t stand cold and winter. I’m more of a tropical animal.” I said, shaking my whole body.
“Yes, I know, not your usual garden variety dream, but I don’t think I was ever meant for normality.
Anyway, I set about trying to find a job through the Australian Antarctic Program. The interview went really well, the job was offered to me, subject to my physical test.
I was so excited to think that this dream was actually turning into a reality.
But as often happens, life gets in the way of living.
At my physical test, I was told I had a visual issue that I needed to investigate more, and a few months later I was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition called Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP).
This condition was dormant in my body from birth and could manifest itself at any stage in life. I was fortunate to not notice its impact until my 50s. But the signs were there, I just chose to ignore them. For me, it’s been a slow deterioration, and for that I’m grateful; it can suddenly just turn the lights out, and you wake up one morning totally blind. It’s a nightmare I simply dismiss because I won’t live my remaining life in fear. To date, I have lost 85% of my peripheral vision, as well as my night vision, so no more walks in the night for me, hahaha.”
“Man, I remember you told me in one of our chats you had some visual problems. I couldn’t imagine they were at this stage. But what does this imply? I mean, I don’t know what this condition is about.”
“This loss impacts my depth of field perception, making it hard to judge distances. I’ve dropped a few cups of coffee on the floor because I misjudged the location of the coffee table. It also has given me a loss of contrast, which makes walking downstairs a nightmare as I can’t tell where the step starts or ends. Basically, stairs look like a flat ramp instead of stairs.”
“Ok, got it. And I imagine there are a million things it will impact on in the everyday life.” I said. I was trying to figure out myself, in my daily routine, what it would be like to have such limited vision.
He nodded and continued the story.
“Anyway, as you can imagine this diagnosis shattered my Antarctic dream into dust.
But from a shattered dream rose a magical reality.
My daughter, feeling my total despair, wanting to cheer me up from this impactful diagnosis, decided to gift me a beautiful hardcover book on Antarctica by Sebastian Copeland, a British-American-French photographer, polar explorer, author, lecturer, and environmental advocate called, ‘Antarctica: The Global Warning’ (2007).
The photography in this book was incredibly inspiring as was the message it conveyed. While scrolling Sebastian’s posts, I stumbled upon a picture of a “little red tent” in the middle of a world of snow and ice.
Its simple beauty struck me hard and I decided to leave a comment that went something like this: ‘Oh if I were but a few years younger, I would be there amongst the snow and the penguins.’
As it happened, across the other side of the world, in Dubai (UAE), a woman in the process of trying to release herself from a marriage uncannily similar to mine, also following Sebastian’s Facebook page, spotted the ‘little red tent’ and noticed my comment. She clicked the like button, and with that click, the universe went into overdrive and created magic.”
I moved myself on the chair finding a more comfortable position. When I hear the word ‘magic’ I get excited because very often something beautiful is about to happen.
“Now, listen: when I was notified that someone had liked my comment I went to see who it was. Her page was private, the cover photo was of a beautiful long beach with golden sands and clear blue waters, and her profile simply showed the back of a woman, with flowing blonde hair, a floral hippie shirt, and shorts standing in the clear blue waters. No indication of age, or location.
To my surprise, the only available information was her ‘About Me’ section. As I began to read it, I felt goosebumps all over me. I sat there for quite a while trying to make sense of what I had read, but no sense came to me.
Crazy enough, it was almost word for word what I had written about myself.
You can imagine my mind was racing in a million directions at the same time. I asked myself: how is this possible? Who is this person? What’s going on here?
I decided the only thing to do was to message her and see what came from that.
The message read:
‘Hi I’m Joe and I feel compelled to write to you. I do not know who you are, where you live, or how old you are, but after reading your About Me, I was struck by the incredible similarity of your words with mine. I write to you in the hope of friendship for a coincidence such as this can not be ignored. Should you choose not to reciprocate I will respect your choice and your privacy. I’m not interested in a relationship, but I am open to a friendship. If you feel the same as me please do send me a friend request and I will accept it with open arms. If not, then I will wish you a happy and fortuitous life.
I am however really hoping you will reply and we can give birth to a wonderful friendship.’”
I was now devoured by curiosity. “Did she reply to you?” I asked interrupting his narration.
Joe smiled: “Well, the friend request came early the next day, and I eagerly accepted. I felt the excitement of a teenager without really understanding why. Needless to say, within days we were chatting like old friends, soon we moved on to calling on the phone, and then Skype. Within weeks from our ‘meeting’ she had returned to Orlando Florida and was now free of her marital shackles. Six months later she surprised me by telling me she was planning a visit to Sydney.”
This could have been the plot for a movie. And I felt happy for him.
“Meeting her at Sydney’s International Airport was a slightly nervous 57-year-old man holding a huge bunch of flowers. When she came down the ramp she did not see me, but I followed her with my eyes, and slowly made my way behind her. I stood still and unseen, blocked from her view, for what felt like hours. In fact, it was only seconds. As she turned, I never even gave her a chance to speak; I just embraced her in a hug that I can still feel today. I remember her perfume was mild and flowery, and her hair was soft and smelled fruity.
All nervousness vanished, and as we sat sipping coffee in a noisy airport lounge, it felt like I had just been reunited with my best friend after many years apart.
That was in April 2012. By November of that same year, I decided to travel to Orlando.
That was no simple task for me. I was not a young man, visually impaired, and had never travelled to the USA.
But for some reason, I was confident without actually knowing why.
That was one of three trips I made to Orlando. The last trip was in November 2015, and that was for a permanent one-way trip.
I came with a Foreign Fiance Visa, which stipulates that you must be married within 90 days of arrival. We married two weeks after landing.
We now live close to the centre of Orlando in a beautiful home and we have an incredibly intelligent dog called Tallulha.”
“Yesss! This is the perfect happy ending!” I said.
It was an incredible story and the final is just the way one expects it to be: with people finding the true engine of the world – love.
“Regardless of the painful road that brought me here, this final destination is where I found the true me.”
We stayed for a few last (and lighter) chats and then we saluted each other.
The stop in Orlando, which started as something extremely bothering, proved to be one of the most interesting and pleasant moments I’d had in a long time.
I watched Joe getting into the cab on his way back home.
Then I smiled and reached my room, richer than I was just a few hours before.
Thank you so much, Joe, for sharing your life with me and for telling me all about yourself.
You can check Joe’s profile and work on Vero.
Take care and talk soon!