We love the ocean, old movies, music, and dolphins? who doesn't!

Jean-Marc Barr starred in one of our favourite films, The Big Blue by Luc Besson. It's a liberal depiction of the free-diving adventurer Jacques Mayol.

Mayol was French, but born in Shanghai and learned to free-dive in the oceans of Japan. (How cool is that??)

He would later write the book, Homo Delphinus: The Dolphin Within Man. For those uninitiated, freediving is the art of diving deep on a single breath of air. Divers say it's like being at one with the ocean. Mayol was the first to reach a depth of 100 meters (330 ft)! 

Jean-Marc, who portrays Mayol, is a French/American but born in West Germany (a country that no longer exists!). He studied philosophy at UCLA, The Conservatoire de Paris, and the Sorbonne, before moving onto acting in London, eschewing "big" roles to focus on work that inspired him.

What's not to love about these two: obscure & beautiful, bilingual & multicultural, AND they both...wait for it...dove with DOLPHINS!!! 💥

It’s a Tuesday evening here on the island of Santa Maria in the Azores. “It Must Have Been Love” plays on our vintage marantz stereo receiver and outside there is a saturated double rainbow over the ocean we can see from inside the house...there’s magic in the air.

It’s 6pm, the time of day when the local Radio Clube Asas station plays dreamy 80s hits, the time when we usually all come inside to wind down from the outdoors- and we slow down.

The mood has us thinking of the days when this music played regularly on the radio- days pre-internet. There was such a magic to that time- Life was so different. How do we bring that back?

A year ago we were unpacking a half container from our previous life in Canada and settling into our new home here in the Azores. We were laying out the design for our first book, selecting paper qualities and working on print timelines. We were developing concepts for our first jewy collection and tinkering anxiously with instagram as a medium to connect with the outside world from out here in the middle of nowhere. 

We adopted a wild island kitten (Jiji), spent many days at the beach, in our garden, and hiking the island. We planted (and failed) and tried planting again (more successfully) our first trees, flower bushes, palms and fruit/vegetable garden.

We weathered our first winter storms, walked our dogs dreamlike through the Calheta fog and witnessed numerous moon and sunrises - embracing the natural rhythm & seasonal cycle of our island. 

We began learning, practicing, & stumbling through Portuguese (our daughter Etienne became fluent). We launched Neon Joyride, published our first book, and wrote a few more. We all began learning to surf. We hosted our first visitors, and were able to share our new world with our family and a few close friends. We said goodbye to a family member and our dog Whiskey walked through the Lion's Gate. We all made some new friends. 

Tomer & I turned 40. My mother said it right- our 40s are when we come into our super powers. We still have our youth, our health, some wisdom, & enough life experience & energy to make things happen - to live the life we choose, to follow our true paths.

Many people ask us why we chose the cactus as an icon for our logo. If you know us, you know we are sun lovers- and cacti need a lot of sun, like us! This is what initially drew us to the cactus, but as we began to think of how slow a cactus grows, it seemed even more appropriate. The cactus symbol seemed to reflect us as a family as we were looking to embrace a slower lifestyle.

The cactus also symbolizes minimalism. A cactus doesn’t need much- just plenty of "sol" and a bit of water. We too were looking to live a simpler life -full of love and soul. We were also looking to live with less...less stuff, less waste, less work, less consumption, less impact, less noise. 

Cacti also represent endurance as they thrive in rugged natural landscapes. We were in transition to the beautiful raw island of Santa Maria in the Azores archipelago- which just so happens to have many types of cacti! This endurance is linked to a mother's love in native cultures, and this was especially meaningful for me as I longed for more precious time with my children.

Another fun fact- my husband and I met each other in Austin, Texas- so a cactus is also something that reminds us a little of our southwest roots- which brings us full circle. 

Island living is magic...everything about it. Being so near the water, smelling the humidity in the air and watching the mist rise in the morning... along the coast the fog and mist meet with the salty spray of the seas- 

This picture is from a morning exploring São Pedro on the Western side of our island. Early morning and in the evenings clouds hug Pico Alto, our tallest mountain.

In a previous post we talked about Hesse. How one person leads to another and one idea to another. For example - Hesse dedicated the first part of Siddhartha to Romain Rolland, a contemporary of his. I had not heard of Rolland before reading Siddhartha and not of Hesse before meeting Paul (see other post). So of course we checked out Rolland - a writer, humanist, mystic and an early Western explorer of Eastern thought; he coined an interesting phrase - "The Oceanic Feeling".

Rolland describes the "Oceanic Feeling" as the sensation of being one with everything, the feeling of the eternal. He coined it in a letter to S.Freud - "Mais j'aurais aimé à vous voir faire l'analyse du sentiment religieux spontané ou, plus exactement, de la sensation religieuse qui est...le fait simple et direct de la sensation de l'Eternel (qui peut très bien n'être pas éternel, mais simplement sans bornes perceptibles, et comme océanique)". 

He speaks of that ephemeral feeling of being limitless, of being one with the universe. 

The ocean forces us to stand still, to watch it, admire it; and by doing we stop for a moment or two, we think, we turn inwards. Hearing the crashing of the waves, the sounds of something so awesome (in the truest sense of the word), we feel at once insignificant and eternal. 

Not sure how many people have seen dolphins -Not at a waterpark, not on a tour or at some tourist feeding spot or swimming attraction -but out of nowhere, when out at sea and in the wild. There are so many photos of them and movies, and yes even statues and snow globes, and on and on. But to see them in real life, up close and personal, swimming and playing beside you, diving in and out of the water in arches, racing, diving beneath our inflatable boat and popping up again is something that's so special it's difficult to even describe, except for to yell through a huge smile when describing it to someone - WE SAW DOLPHINS!!!

Mammals, dolphins are actually small whales. They are truly a magical creature. Their energy is contagious and being with them brings out your inner child, time stands still and you feel like the luckiest kid in the world. 

We have just one traffic light on the island and it's only on sometimes. The island itself is just shy of 97km2. To give you an idea, the smallest U.S. state of Rhode Island is over 3,000km2, roughly 30x bigger. So what's it like? You get to know everyone and everyone pretty much knows where you live. They'll show up sometimes, to ask a question, to borrow something or to remind you to bring back something you've borrowed. 

It's one of those things, where you think, should I pick up the phone and call them, or just walk over and see if they are at home. We usually choose the latter; it's always more fun and the way of living slow. 

Back to the traffic light. We're not sure what it's for, accept to maybe slow us down on the way into the main town, though there are speed bumps just before. Perhaps it is to remind us that we all need to stop, even on a small island it's good to be reminded to slow down, to stop and to smell the palm trees...

 The beaches on our island are often littered with plastics. We feel obligated and inspired to do something about it - even if it is something small, which for us has become regular outings to the beach for cleanups. Sometimes they are short, other times long and daunting, but now each time we go to the beach - even if just for some fun & sun - we come out with plastics.

We also like to collect “mermaid treasure" - bits of sea glass, coral, shells, small rocks polished and weathered by the waves. Sometimes on our cleanups, we come across a fragment of ocean plastic that has a strange and similar beauty (ironically). We separate these treasures - and later sort them at our studio by size, shape, likeness, and color. Inspired by the raw beauty and texture of each unique ocean fragment, we ponder the distance each has travelled and the time it took for the natural elements to mold them. We carefully wash each piece by hand with soap and an old brush, finally laying them out to dry in the sun.

 
 Our jewelry is then made by hand in our home studio, combining ocean fragments with 24k gold vermeil and recycled sterling silver (supplied by an ethical metalsmith in Rajasthan). We create with love and hope that our jewelry will become a token for those who wear it - a reminder to mind our impact, to treasure our planet.   

The days alternate between rainy, foggy, sweater weather days and bright summery, cool & breezy, no t-shirt required days. The locals have a saying, "four seasons in a day".

We go surfing every couple of days when the sea is less wild. Even when it is, we sometimes go, maybe not to surf, but just to look out, and try and catch the sunset, which often is hidden behind a long wall of clouds. Even now, I stare out the window and see light refracting through the clouds. 

Every day (pretty much) there is a rainbow. Some are small, others are quite large. Some are full, from one end to the other, others are double. I even saw yesterday a rainbow "spot" over the water. It was like a prism just hovering above the ocean.