Tsunami Eyes

Tsunami Eyes

Tsunami Eyes is a love story which starts and finishes with the last moments of Rosie and Jamie walking on a beach as the Thailand tsunami of 2004 races towards them.

In those final seconds, the rest of their story is told in reverse, allowing readers to see how the kindred souls of Rosie and Jamie started and evolved together.

The basis of the novel is my fascination with idea of two lost souls finding each other in a special location such as South America and despite the changing places, people, experiences, highs and lows of their lives that follow, in their final moments their love proves the only thing that matters.

I asked myself what do we all commonly struggle with and tried to create themes around the dilemmas that myself and others feel throughout life. Hence there are a few themes in the novel, including love, youthful goals versus life’s realities, wanderlust, renewal and companionship, however for me it is fundamentally about ones epiphany and the lesson that none of us should wait until our final moments to realize that we only live once, so live it damn well, do what makes you happy and spend time only with people who add value to your life.

Please tell us about the picture that you found that sparked the idea for this book.

After the Thailand Tsunami of Boxing day 2004, I was dumbstruck when I saw a photo of a Canadian couple standing hand in hand as the wave approached them. I know absolutely nothing about the couple beyond the photo and their names. I have used nothing in this novel regarding them however when I saw the photo, I was in awe at the gravitas of the final moments of their lives which were laid out in such beautifully sad clarity for the entire world to see.   

I would imagine that they had no time to run away and could only stand and watch the wave rush towards them and my mind ran wild as to what one must think in such a situation, especially when ones love is beside them. Imagine one moment walking on a beach with your wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend whilst on holidays, and the next moment your last thoughts are running through your mind. This is the bottom line really, that we only live once and we have absolutely no idea when life can be taken away.

Hence, when one is in that situation, and we all will be in some varying degree one day, we need to ensure that we have no regrets in those final thoughts. Luckily enough, if you are reading this right now, you have the power to maintain or change your life to ensure that your final thoughts are filled with a peace of mind.

Why did it make you feel like you had an unfulfilled life?

If you were to die 5 seconds from now, what would run through your mind and would you be happy with the life you lived? I asked myself that question and the answer was no. All of my life I had strived for more of this and more of that without truly realizing what made me happy. All I knew was what I did not want out of life rather than what I do want out of life. I did not want the girlfriend I had at the time, I didn’t want the same jobs of those I graduated with, I didn’t want my life to pass by in the blink of an eye and I did not want to go through the motions. In essence I realized I was not remotely close to achieving peace of mind.  

You are well travelled so where is your favorite place to be?

My experience is that every place that one visits can be ones favourite as its specialness depends on who you are with, what stage of life you are at, what new experiences you feel and your state of mind at the time.

For instance, I have wonderful memories going to Skerries beach North of Dublin with my extended family, despite grey clouds above and sharp rocks tearing my feet to bits. In contrast, I remember backpacking on my own in Belize and sitting by the most beautiful Topaz coloured sea with a cocktail in one hand, a book in the other and not being especially happy. The memories of playing football with my cousins on the wet Irish grass definitely supersede those of watching yachts in the distance and reggae men singing close by.  

So my favorite place to be at the moment is actually at home here in Dubai, hosting a BBQ with friends or family under the warm sky with cheesy 70s and 80s songs on in the background, while my dog gets up to mischief around the garden and my girlfriend shouts at me to get more wine.

Other amazing times and places that made me greatly happy, was my first living abroad experience at Interlaken in Switzerland, a year of hedonism in Berlin, a new beginning in Buenos Aires and the blue skies over the West Coast of Ireland with friends.

Why was South America so inspiring for your writing?

I landed in Buenos Aires at a time of my life when I was not sure where I was heading. I had finished my PhD and hadn’t a clue what was next and with reasoning that was ruled by the heart and not the head, I decided to backpack around South America on my own for a year.

There were many places I could have chosen to backpack, places like Asia, Africa, Australia or America, however South America had an unparalleled promise of romance and adventure, which it fully delivered on.

Just as one cannot categorize Europe into one experience, neither can one do so with South America. The main feeling I had there was a real sense of freedom. Freedom in the sense that there is no set tourist trail, that the vistas are spectacular and feel untouched, that the people are passionate instead of guarded, that the legacy of rebellion of people like Che Guavara  and O Higgins still permeates the mindset, that like-minded souls are attracted there, that bureaucracy will not stifle you and that a completely new adventure is just a bus ride (albeit long one) away and finally that the day and night are whatever you want to make from them. I am inspired by the writings of Jack Kerouac but his days of sticking ones thumb out on the Western road to seek adventure are long gone. However one can still experience that Beatnik like freedom, where ones existence is somewhat pure, in South America I think.

You had a near death experience that also helped to from this book, so can you tell us a bit about this?

Seeing the photo of the Tsunami couple brought back sharply to memory two experiences I had within 3 days in New York in 2001, where the fleeting nature of life scared the hell out of me. To cut a long story short, on September 8th 2001 I nearly died in a fire in Queens and 3 days later I was in the environs of the September 11th attacks. 

I am conscience that I could have died in both incidents if the winds of fate had blown in slightly different directions. Particularly in the case of the fire, my life really did pass by my eyes. At the time I was living in quite a dodgy part of Queens by the East River in essentially a construction yard. A halogen lamp caught fire and very quickly began to spread around the completely wooden structure and simultaneously around me. I had saved a substantial amount of money that summer from working on the construction sites of New York, which was literally stuffed underneath the mattress. As the fire engulfed the place, I had a choice to go for my passport and cash or to flee outside. The decision to run and jump over a fire at the door saved my life as seconds later the place went up in flames. To this day I remember the key thoughts running through my mind whilst wondering about that decision.

I remember sitting shaking outside of the building being comforted by Irish American firemen, with a gradual clarity and awareness dawning on me that my life lived up until that moment was not a fulfilling one. I was still a young guy at the time but up until that moment I had been obsessed with jobs, exams and climbing the staircase of life, without taking the time to stop and enjoy the experiences and people around me. 

Three days later I was a few hundred metres from the twin towers when the first plane hit. I ran along with many other people away from the scene. I will never forget the brave firemen driving the opposite direction to me, towards the inferno. A week later, I trawled through the New York Post and saw two obituaries of Irish American firemen that had comforted me only days previously after my own fire. 

The key questions that I succinctly remember asking myself those days were:

  1. Was my life worth it and spent doing things I wish I had done?
  2. Did I find my true love and will she the one standing beside me at the end?
  3. Were the final recollections and crisp images that my mind in front of the fire the same ones I want to remember when it is truly my time?  

 

Seeing the photo of the couple on the beach in front of the Tsunami brought the fire and 9/11 attacks strongly back to my mind and reminded me that I should never forget the lessons I learned that day.

Why do you think that we take those around us for granted?

The central tenant of this romantic novel is one of realizing that the most important thing in life is quite often standing right in front of you and that we shouldn’t need moments of existential hindsight to realize that.

We get bogged down in the day to day activities of life and we hear, but we don’t listen. A perfect example is  with couples who are married for many years. They still love each other and are devoted to each other, but have stopped liking each other. How to explain this? We get in this cycle of trying to be more interesting rather than be interested in others. When that happens we lose the empathetic connection that makes the other person feel ‘felt’ and furthermore, valuable. We humans react as to others as they do onto us, hence we ourselves stop feeling valuable. The process of which means we continue to exist with those we love around us, but we take them for granted.

The best analogy I have heard is that conversations become like a tennis match, with the point being batted across the table with the goal to beat the other persons point. Rather than approaching conversations with those around us with this mindset, it is better every day to ‘know’ that the other person has something interesting thing to share and to go on a journey to find that thing.

What is next for you?

Less travel, more time with my loved ones, more giving rather than receiving and more walking with my dog.

 


by for www.femalefirst.co.uk
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