Running Dog/Fish
Aug. 30th, 2007 09:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
summer_jackelFish, like words, can be elusive, sliding away from your hand and your intention with frustrating ease, unholdable: or, once in the hand, if you are very lucky, flash for an instant with blinding beauty, essential life. Words, like fish, can be tricky to find and to catch, and can at times hold something more mysterious and frustratingly difficult to define than their mere utility.
Yesterday, I was riding a tandem bicycle with my partner, one of the things we like to do. It was a lovely day in mid-August, warm but not unpleasantly so, one of those days when you can sense the brevity of it and the coming of autumn, but aren't yet quite certain why. I am fortunate enough to live in a beautiful place, and so we stopped, as we often do on this particular route, in the middle of an old iron truss bridge that permits a narrow country road to cross the Russian River.
This late in the summer, the Russian is wide and slow and green. From the bridge looking down you can see the thick mat of pale weeds that lines its shallow southern boundary and the oak and bay laurel tangle overlooking its steeper shore. The sandbar in the middle is probably only waist-high on me now (you might not survive a fall, some useless part of my brain always lets me know, and whatever happened it would hurt you) but the cooler, deeper channel at its side still hides languid current. Redwoods gird around that, and the blue sky casts white patterns of rippling sunlight on the water. People occasionally pass underneath in a canoe, as depressingly banal as people sometimes seem. There is a merganser in the distance, a couple of mallards, the bridge, Chris, the bike, me.
We were deep in conversation about some very symbolic, important things when I looked into the deeper side of the river and saw them. Hanging motionless in the heat of noon, near enough the surface to make out their details, at least a dozen, perhaps more. Salmon: sadly, I do not know enough to tell their species, Chinook or Coho, Sockeye or Steelhead, from that distance.
It was, of course, a privilege and a thrill to see them. The Russian for all its lovely pastorality is far from unwounded; the heaviness of its green speaks too much of humanity's work and most of its historical fish stocks are gone. The salmon are still there, albeit endangered, but they no longer seethe. My heart always quickens when I see a wild salmon, a spike of excitement, a little catch of joy.
I'm not alone in that. This is a deeply symbolic fish for a lot of people, ancient to modern, and for a lot of reasons. A sacred fish, object of worship or at least profound respect. Every culture that has ever lived with them has honored them, held them holy in its own way. The Christians' gentle prophet borrowed power from the fish symbol as the Irish heroes ate wisdom through the vehicle of its flesh; modern fisherman and environmentalists alike find passion in it. Why? Well, they taste delicious for one, and underneath that flippancy: they are food. Anadromous fish will sustain you with the parental trustworthiness of the Nile Delta (before we dared to alter even that). There's a reason the Pacific Northwest held a greater population density with easier, peaceful interracial cooperation, before the coming of the Europeans, than anywhere else in North America.
The sad and awesome spectacle of their life cycles is another reason; a pretty little freshwater fish that leaves us for the great salt mystery and comes back splendid, alien, irrevocably changed, to mate in a frenzy and then die at the height of its vitality. A drama and horror more riveting than the latest blockbuster, more resonant than Shakespeare. There's a reason we burden them with our symbolism, use them to discover things about our own unconscious selves.
And they are beautiful things. Huge and silvery, iridescent, sleek, a handsome fish with real presence. I cannot be in the water with one without stilling, without holding it in a sense of reverent awe. How do you feel when you see a wildcat unexpectedly on the trail, look into its startled yellow eyes for an instant before it melts back into its element? A litter of grey fox kits blinking at you warily from the branches of an oak at night, the stately presence of a herd of elk, huge, noble and unconcerned?
So, this fish means something to us crazy humans. We're needy things, and we need, and take, a lot from it. This fish is important, viscerally important in ways we can only get to the edge of, wade in, and maybe if we're standing at the right vantage, notice where there lurk deep spots. What do I need from this fish? Everything, really.
The fish needs nothing from me. See them hanging in the still, cool water, endlessly quiet. See them shy easily away from the oblivious family in their canoe, only to reform again when the people have gone. Why do they like precisely that place, why have they chosen it to congregate on this afternoon? What do they communicate to one another, hanging suspended, nose-to-nose in their element? Do they at all?
Were I to kneel at the water's edge and lay my hand, soft-skinned compared to their flashing sides, into the water, they would flit away. Step into the water and be patient enough and the small ones will come to explore and nibble with their raspy fishy mouths, but never the old ones. They are mute and they keep their secrets: they must, for even if we had between us a common language, their understanding, their being, is not something we can share. My hands in the water speak of the years I have lived and a few stories that have left scars, and more basically that I am primate, five-fingered, of a species able to work metal and sew its wounds. A simian animal. There she hangs in the water, fish qua fish, salmon, provider, prey, equal to me, if that word has any meaning. To seek the animal facts of her, her life history and the pattern of her evolution, this is important, and beautiful. A necessary and vital tribute. For us.
Catch them, sometimes, and they cry with pain: we know that. Learn their dramatic cycles, this we can do with some difficulty, and anyone can see the aching grace of their movement. Still. There is something in a fish's eye that remains forever beyond understanding. Be lucky enough to catch her and you can feel the slippery texture between your fingers, see the fleeting exquisite flash of her color, then release her to her element or use her flesh to continue your own being: your lives will still only brush against one another. There is no holding a living fish, not for more than a few seconds. This is what we may have of them. Look: she's a fish. A fish, solid, living, real, true, not a symbol, not food, not an object of study, a fish.
Say their names, then: Oncorhynchus tshawytscha, O. keta, O. kisutch, O. nerka, O. gorbuscha, O. mykiss. Speak Chinook, Chum, Coho, Sockeye, Pink, Steelhead trout. Honor them as holy; they are holy. Honor that is we for whom holiness is meaningful, and that these are something far greater than holiness. They are fish.
Yesterday, I was riding a tandem bicycle with my partner, one of the things we like to do. It was a lovely day in mid-August, warm but not unpleasantly so, one of those days when you can sense the brevity of it and the coming of autumn, but aren't yet quite certain why. I am fortunate enough to live in a beautiful place, and so we stopped, as we often do on this particular route, in the middle of an old iron truss bridge that permits a narrow country road to cross the Russian River.
This late in the summer, the Russian is wide and slow and green. From the bridge looking down you can see the thick mat of pale weeds that lines its shallow southern boundary and the oak and bay laurel tangle overlooking its steeper shore. The sandbar in the middle is probably only waist-high on me now (you might not survive a fall, some useless part of my brain always lets me know, and whatever happened it would hurt you) but the cooler, deeper channel at its side still hides languid current. Redwoods gird around that, and the blue sky casts white patterns of rippling sunlight on the water. People occasionally pass underneath in a canoe, as depressingly banal as people sometimes seem. There is a merganser in the distance, a couple of mallards, the bridge, Chris, the bike, me.
We were deep in conversation about some very symbolic, important things when I looked into the deeper side of the river and saw them. Hanging motionless in the heat of noon, near enough the surface to make out their details, at least a dozen, perhaps more. Salmon: sadly, I do not know enough to tell their species, Chinook or Coho, Sockeye or Steelhead, from that distance.
It was, of course, a privilege and a thrill to see them. The Russian for all its lovely pastorality is far from unwounded; the heaviness of its green speaks too much of humanity's work and most of its historical fish stocks are gone. The salmon are still there, albeit endangered, but they no longer seethe. My heart always quickens when I see a wild salmon, a spike of excitement, a little catch of joy.
I'm not alone in that. This is a deeply symbolic fish for a lot of people, ancient to modern, and for a lot of reasons. A sacred fish, object of worship or at least profound respect. Every culture that has ever lived with them has honored them, held them holy in its own way. The Christians' gentle prophet borrowed power from the fish symbol as the Irish heroes ate wisdom through the vehicle of its flesh; modern fisherman and environmentalists alike find passion in it. Why? Well, they taste delicious for one, and underneath that flippancy: they are food. Anadromous fish will sustain you with the parental trustworthiness of the Nile Delta (before we dared to alter even that). There's a reason the Pacific Northwest held a greater population density with easier, peaceful interracial cooperation, before the coming of the Europeans, than anywhere else in North America.
The sad and awesome spectacle of their life cycles is another reason; a pretty little freshwater fish that leaves us for the great salt mystery and comes back splendid, alien, irrevocably changed, to mate in a frenzy and then die at the height of its vitality. A drama and horror more riveting than the latest blockbuster, more resonant than Shakespeare. There's a reason we burden them with our symbolism, use them to discover things about our own unconscious selves.
And they are beautiful things. Huge and silvery, iridescent, sleek, a handsome fish with real presence. I cannot be in the water with one without stilling, without holding it in a sense of reverent awe. How do you feel when you see a wildcat unexpectedly on the trail, look into its startled yellow eyes for an instant before it melts back into its element? A litter of grey fox kits blinking at you warily from the branches of an oak at night, the stately presence of a herd of elk, huge, noble and unconcerned?
So, this fish means something to us crazy humans. We're needy things, and we need, and take, a lot from it. This fish is important, viscerally important in ways we can only get to the edge of, wade in, and maybe if we're standing at the right vantage, notice where there lurk deep spots. What do I need from this fish? Everything, really.
The fish needs nothing from me. See them hanging in the still, cool water, endlessly quiet. See them shy easily away from the oblivious family in their canoe, only to reform again when the people have gone. Why do they like precisely that place, why have they chosen it to congregate on this afternoon? What do they communicate to one another, hanging suspended, nose-to-nose in their element? Do they at all?
Were I to kneel at the water's edge and lay my hand, soft-skinned compared to their flashing sides, into the water, they would flit away. Step into the water and be patient enough and the small ones will come to explore and nibble with their raspy fishy mouths, but never the old ones. They are mute and they keep their secrets: they must, for even if we had between us a common language, their understanding, their being, is not something we can share. My hands in the water speak of the years I have lived and a few stories that have left scars, and more basically that I am primate, five-fingered, of a species able to work metal and sew its wounds. A simian animal. There she hangs in the water, fish qua fish, salmon, provider, prey, equal to me, if that word has any meaning. To seek the animal facts of her, her life history and the pattern of her evolution, this is important, and beautiful. A necessary and vital tribute. For us.
Catch them, sometimes, and they cry with pain: we know that. Learn their dramatic cycles, this we can do with some difficulty, and anyone can see the aching grace of their movement. Still. There is something in a fish's eye that remains forever beyond understanding. Be lucky enough to catch her and you can feel the slippery texture between your fingers, see the fleeting exquisite flash of her color, then release her to her element or use her flesh to continue your own being: your lives will still only brush against one another. There is no holding a living fish, not for more than a few seconds. This is what we may have of them. Look: she's a fish. A fish, solid, living, real, true, not a symbol, not food, not an object of study, a fish.
Say their names, then: Oncorhynchus tshawytscha, O. keta, O. kisutch, O. nerka, O. gorbuscha, O. mykiss. Speak Chinook, Chum, Coho, Sockeye, Pink, Steelhead trout. Honor them as holy; they are holy. Honor that is we for whom holiness is meaningful, and that these are something far greater than holiness. They are fish.
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-31 04:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-31 01:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-31 10:45 pm (UTC)...
got noticeable moments of silence,stillness,nice peaceful-ness
from...reading this...as it appears
too me...this writting...is...beatuiful.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-02 02:45 am (UTC)Hey, if you are in the mood this week, please feel free to come over and take Fen and Jez for a walk (with their choke chains). C and I will be gone; Lucy will be walking them and they could use all the exercise they can get. If you can't or don't want to, no worries. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-01 04:45 pm (UTC)