1994 French Bread Awards - Second Prize
Emergent evolution ocean time water movement.
An overcast day in
Seward. A clear, overcast day in Seward. Gray,
but you can see in front
of your face. You can see your face in front
of you. I could see, did see.
My face saw the ocean. I saw the ocean. Through
a window. Glass silica
sand from the bottom of the ocean. Inside the
laboratory. Through a
window. I saw fish, a fish, the fish. The fish
in the tank, swimming
circular, circadian swims. Swing around and around
a six foot
diameter pool. Swimming the rhythm that is fish
time. Swimming with
the ocean inside and out. Removed from the ocean.
From the ocean,
through the window. Swimming the rhythm that
is back to freshwater.
Now tangibly circular. That should be back to
the mountain freshwater
stream. Removed from the ocean. Round and round.
The salt water
tank. Not a freshwater stream. Not the freshwater
stream that would be
home. Signal completion. This fish will never
smell home clear. Clear
to me. Clear to the fish. Sag around and around
a six foot
diameter pool. Clear to the fish. Carrying the
ocean in time. In his fish
brain. Clear to the fish. Caught again. A second
time. Swum into a big
net on a long pole and carried. His ocean world
outside. Where it was an
overcast clear day in Seward. Where it was gray
and out of nowhere a
few rays of sun streaked though. Anesthesia.
For the fish. Anesthesia.
For me, as the fish fell asleep, was anesthetized.
Out of nowhere a few
rays of sun streaked though. An action as alien
as anesthetizing a fish.
A perversion of kindness. A cruelty that desecrates
the primal being of
fish. The essence of time. To catch it in the
act. The process of being.
Of being ancient and primal. I killed the fish.
I slit its gills and looked
away to the now brilliant sky. To the nature
of trees for atonement. The
mountains lording over me. There could be none.
I killed the fish to
catch it in the act of being not-dead.
© 1995 - French Bread Publications/Melissa Anderson