I just like looking at the fish. It makes me feel curious. The only way to recapture the purity of youth—the pursuit of knowledge. Buy the fish. Watch them. Feed the fish treats. Never name them.
*
Souls meandering about a common cultural link—me and the guy at the aquarium shop. He seems nice. Asking questions to the worker about plants, species. I feel the innate desire to become his friend. To talk about fish. To find a commonality with another person, be seen. Smiled at. Nobody told me how lonely adulthood would be.
*
When I was young I couldn't read yet. And my mom would say the pet store wasn't open. One day, according to her, I said "o-p-e-n, that spells open." and I got mad at her for lying. We went inside and I was in bliss. Iguanas, snakes, ferrets, fish. I wanted them all. Needed them. I would sob uncontrollably as we left empty handed. Maybe that's why I return to the pet stores. A comfort of sorts. Chasing who I used to be, lamenting the broken twenty-something failure I had become.
*
Owning a fish tank is a lot like being God. The choices, I mean. All controlling. Maybe not omnipotent, but filled with knowledge of a million forum threads and reddit posts. Terminally observing. Watching them. Curating an environment; temperature, substrate, chemical balances. Holding test tubes and sampling the water. Hyperventilating when the pH is too high. Keeping an aquarium is supposed to be peaceful, and maybe to the mentally well it is. I feel pride when the ecosystem is balanced but it's hard work being God. Medicating illness. Healing gills. Making sure the whole world gets along, no bullying. I remember the first death. A hill-stream loach. He was my favorite fish. And I found his slime coated body, a myriad of shrimp feasting on the fuzzy white corpse. Cold and unfeeling as I scooped him from the tank. Burying the fish outside, under a tree. I stopped naming the fish that day. It hurt. I failed, as God.
*
Holding a large Raphael catfish in one hand and manually filtering water into its gills. Dragging it softly to help it breathe. It was hyperventilating, it seemed. Unable to breathe. Phone in my other hand, rapidly googling. Looking for an answer.
*
A small boy with a bowl cut sat Indian-style on the floor in front of a book shelf. On the book shelf is an alphabetic encyclopedia of animals—mostly amphibians and reptiles. The boy has sat there for hours reading. Running his fingers over pictures of exotic lizards and. crustaceans. Repeating lines from the encyclopedia over and over in his head. Trying to memorize every little fact. A television off in the distance is set to Animal Planet. Steve Irwin's voice like a violin sifting through the air. Various plastic containers litter the room, with bugs and turtles and newts and such.
*
Didn't have a lot of friends when I was elementary school. The adults called me gifted. The kids called me a faggot. Or nerd. Or know it all. Teachers pet. On the first day of middle school I was in P.E. I saw a kid who looked kinda normal. I scooted over to him and his name was Joey. We became brothers. In High School I made more friends. Brothers. Gal pals, you know. And I would die for them, still, but I ask—where are you? Days pass and I see nobody. Sometimes I don't talk for days on end. Besides to cashiers, gas station attendants. I hate my phone. I hate looking at the names, remembering moments. I put flakes in the top of the tank and watch the fish pick at them. I'm unsmiling. Muted. There is no hatred and no love. Just a person, standing. And the fish, eating.
*
My mom says when I was young that I was the sweetest boy in the whole world. She says that I would talk to everybody; that we could be in the supermarket and I'd see the lobsters in the tank there and get very sad about it and go up to strangers to tell them lobster facts. Lobsters are invertebrates, lobsters may cannibalize other/smaller lobsters, lobsters cannot see well...they navigate mostly by smell.
|