Nausicaa, Burner of Ships

Life has some funny coincidences sometimes. Every day, on my way to work, I pass across a street whose name, despite being familiar to me, I couldn't fix in my mind. Without Wiki, I deduced that it had something to do with the sea since it is close to my apartment, which is near to the sea, and because of the prefix nau-, related to ships and nav-igation. But I didn't care to check any further.

Then, the other day, my friend E., while talking about movies she liked, mentioned some Japanese anime movie named Nausikaa of the Valley of the Wind, by Hayao Miyazaki. "Wooow, I know that name!!!", I thought while she was explaining me the plot along our stroll near Sta. Maria del Mar in El Born. But, still, I didn't check it, not even in Google.

I'm not very interested in anime nor in manga, despite the time spent in Japan. Besides, Miyazaki is too foreseeable and puerile for me. I've seen some of his movies, and there is always the same recurrent themes, such as the destruction of nature, a very peculiar mixture of machines and animals, and always those flying scenes, with all sorts of artifacts, being amidst a blue sky or in the sea.

Oddly for me, Miyazaki's movies make direct usage of characters and places belonging to other literary works, such as Laputa flying isle from Swift's Gulliver's Travels, despite the context and posterior development in the movies differ from the original ones and follow the usual Miyazaki's leitmotifs.



What about Nausikaa? Nausikaa, who was she? I've checked it out and guess what: She turned out to be a character in Homer's Odyssey, another story of travels. Nausikaa was a young and pretty princess, her name meaning burner of ships. She saved the naked and stranded Ulysses from a sure death after a shipwreck and brought him in front of her father, the king, who helped Ulysses to go back home in Ithaca.

Now I remembered it! I read that part of the Odyssey, one of my companion books in Japan, though never finished it --verses were damn too difficult for me!--. Maybe I'm another Ulysses? A traveler, left stranded, and now back to a place near to the sea, not Ithaca though, but another Sta. Maria del Mar. And my Nausikaa? Where is she? I must watch that movie!