letter to the fish I caught as a younger boy
you fit into me like a hook into an eye
a fish hook an open eye
— Margaret Atwood
Dear fish,
Don't bother with what my fellow fisherman said. I thought he was my friend, but really, he's just an unpleasant boy who happens to be housed in the classroom as me.
I'm thoroughly embarrassed by his behaviour. I won't repeat the same words that he used to insult you.
I will remove him from my life once I have no further use for him.
Dear fish, tell me more about you.
Who are your parents? Did you always spend your life in this canal, or did you come from somewhere farther away?
It's so strange. The air that sustains me, out of water – it suffocates you. The water you swim in – that's your amniotic fluid – it drowns me.
O fish, you are my sibling, my cousin. We come from the same Father. Sorry that I put a hook into your lip. Will you forgive me? I didn't know any better. (I just went along with what those unpleasant boys were doing as a sport, or what they perceived as sport.)
I hope you forget about the fishermen who don't treat you well.
You know what? I took your neighbour as dinner. A catfish. There is another boy who resides in the same classroom as me – his “maid”, his household-helper, is from the Philippines – I heard they eat lots of catfish, over there in the Philippines.
His maid cooked your neighbour, the catfish, in spicy assam sauce. And served it with a bowl of piping-hot white rice. That other boy said at the dinner-table: “Do you dare to eat catfish's eyes? Here, I will eat it for you to see. See? And here are catfish's brains. Do you want to eat it?”
I feel like puking. So gross. I think catfish brains are the last straw for me.
Years later, I would learn a mantram from a wise elder.
Say to the individual animal that becomes food on your dinner table: “The same law that subjects you to pain so that you become nourishment for my body, will also subject me to the same pain, so that I become nourishment to another being's body.”
Or something like that. I can't remember the exact words. But, ya, you get the idea.
Dear fish, where are you now? After I took my fishing-hook out of your lip, and threw you back into the canal, did you find a mating partner – did you raise a family of baby fish – did you become food for those intelligent otters?
All the fish I have caught, including you, are so tiny, compared to my fellow fishermen's catches. But someone told me, “There are no tall people without short people to highlight the difference.” So: there are no big fish without small fish.
There are no famous bloggers without obscure bloggers. An obscure blogger like me.
Goodbye, fish. Rest in peace. I am very certain you are dead. (How long is the life-span of a fish-in-a-canal anyway?)
I will be facing my own death, at an hour I cannot stop. The writer of the Quran informs me:
Try as you might, you cannot escape death, even if you lock yourself in an ivory tower.
Elsewhere:
Death does not care whether you have lived one year, or ten years, or one hundred years.
And, from the writers of the Bible:
“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.” – the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 9, verse 10.
Okay, fish. I thank our Creator-Father for your body, and my body, and the body of your neighbour the catfish, who became my dinner, long, long ago.
I will wait patiently for more dinners, with thanksgiving. And then I die. And then Mother Earth will eat my body: by maggots, by rats, by fire, by fungi.
It was nice to meet you, fish!
Ichthys symbol from WikiMedia Commons. (Drawn by Fibonacci, modifying Lupin's PD source code a bit), Public Domain, Hyper-Link