Chains of desire written by Giulio Iacobini

Chains of desire anchored my soul in the harbour of eternal pain. This is the true story of an ex-seaman navigator who through turbulent life in the line of events found himself immerssed in pain, loneliness, desolation and lack of forward vision to the future. A story that perhaps should be read by many folks of you out there that you might find yourselves in similar circumstances, as to avoid likely misshappenings in your lifes. I don't know why I took to the sea, probably just a longing to see other countries, people and places. Despite my life being utterly turned over by the sea I must tell you that as a child I was quiet scared of the water and especially of the powerful impression of a vast sretch of ocean can have upon a melancholic mind. Personally I met few charcters of sailors entrapped in similar circumstances as mine that ended up as lonely drunkards in depression with a constant pain brought on by melancholy and distance from native land and friends. Perhaps there are many cases as such spread all throughout the harbours of the world. This specie of sailors that ends up in a melancholic pain belongs to those disobidient and rebelious, the rascal ones. The ones that belong everywhere and nowhere in particular. The ones that run away from the captain and discipline and desert their crafts for more welcoming shores around the world wherever they happen to be. The main subject of psychological pain and uncurable melancholy is the poverty and lack of funds and a perpetual cycle of events without a viable solution. Crises arise and crises deepens to the point of drowning to a life of grog and depression. I must admit that I like boats and my dream was to spend time on them but it didn't happen that way as I spent most of the time ashore and now and then in psychiatric hospitals where I tried to cure my desperation. The main cause of my problems and chain of events caused by the sea life was mental fatigue because for a weak psychological frame like many sailors are discipline at sea can be very tiresome and can trigger events into individuals aboard that have long lasting consequences. Mental fatigue and stress is an awful cause of many unhappy lifes in today's society and many individuals are falling prey to the claws of psychological destruction and despair. I reccomend to those that find themselves in similar cicumstances to seek community treatment and psychiatric care as there are not many avenues left to a mind thorn apart hurt by lack of sleep and

innability of the brain to properly relax and rest. Life at sea can be very hard by the long hours you spend awake, either in your bunker fighting to dream and relax and being chucked around by rolling and subject to all kinds of vibrations and waves of different frequencies and noises. The resultant of mental fatigue and stress is the longing for alchohol as to knock yourself out and cope with a dim sleep which actually leads to alchoholism and depression. For my life spent aboard I know of many cases like that, probably just the weaker ones. Life at sea can be very tense because the brain is switched on alert mode which just wears down the body and in many cases can lead to accidents caused by fatigue of the crew members. The pain of fatigue is so pronounced aboard big merchant ships that run business around the clock, that in many instances people start to hear ghostly sounds aboard which can coincide with the death of someone aboard n such a way that the crew starts spreading rumours of ghosts aboard and actually some of the poor sailors which are quite religious can go crazy. One of my deckhands on a particular ship sailing between Singapore and Middle East came to me as I was Third Officer on watch and responsible with the First Aid and Medical Section to complain that he couldn't sleep for a week and is so tired he can't sleep anymore. Obviously he had red eyes and a tired look and was laughing with no particular reason so I nformed the captain and he was disembarked in Colombo, Srylanka and flown back to Indonesia, his native country. This particular sailor was a earning a mere $500 a month which must have meant a lot for him in his own country which otherwise is ravaged by piracy and murder on the high seas. Me as a Third Officer navigator I was earning a mere $800 a month for which I was suposed to be on duty minimum 12 hours a day. The problem with fatigue during a voyage across the globe arises from the constant changing of Time Zone and therefor winding back or forward of clocks one hour each day while travelling East-West. The brain is not fast enough to adjust to the time difference probably a problem encountered by people travelling by plane as well at faster rate in which case they call it jetlag. Jet-lag is so powerful on the mind that you actually start to see flashes of light when there is nothing to see, they're ghostly lights. Sometimes I was so tired from lack of sleep 2-3 days that when actually falling in a deep sleep of 20 minutes I was halucinating in my dreams seeing my body asleep in the bunker sorounded by a heavenly light which I call God

and thinking I am already dead and preying to God to bring me back to life.