When you write about Fish

Today, I write about fish. Why? Well, because I can. That’s a lie. It’s because I must.

For as long as I have had my aquarium, (a glass box with an open top, a little taller than my knees, longer than my arm, and as wide as my elbow to my wrist. A small community affair with a few small fish, lots of plants, some stones and a lone driftwood, lots of moss and grass), my dreams have consisted of fish swimming around in varied waters.

In my dream(s), the fish keep trying to escape and I desperately try to put them back in. Sometimes they go flippity- flop on a tiled floor, sometimes they just escape and swim around in air, bright flecks of multicolored light, guppies and angels and goldfish and tetras, and I try to convince them it is better for them to swim in water, air is no place for fish. At others, there’s a flood from somewhere and big fish swim into small aquariums, and I’m scrambling to find bigger aquariums to put them in, or my fish find ways to swim out and escape into a stream, bright, happy, remote, untouchable.

Last night I dreamt of fish again, only this time they were dying fish, fish all around me, melting, their skin soft, no scales, breaking into tiny pink-white- salmon fillets, and I tried to put them back together.

I’ve talked about lucid dreaming, and this was one of those. I knew these were my fish dying and melting as I watched. Another part of me lay awake, telling me this was a movie, all of it a make-believe. Neither these fish nor I was real.

And then I made myself wake up, totter to the aquarium and take a look at all my tiny fish, frozen little shadows, deep in blessed slumber.

Indigo left a comment saying she didn’t know I owned an aquarium. And maybe I didn’t want to blog about it because of the strange, repeated dreams I find myself in each night, dreams that probably say something to me. Or may be stuff about me. I dunno. That’s why perhaps I decided to write about the fish.

All I know is that the new ferny-floaty plants I bought last week make my aquarium look like a tiny patch of fairyland, that my two tiny blue male dwarf gouramis have called ceasefire over disputed territories and seem to be getting along at last. The golden tetras have stopped dying. The last four seem to be eating well. My rummy nose tetras flaunt bright and lively red mouths, and my pretty blue-red cardinals play about this morning. The lone white angel is curious and hungry, at its healthful best.

To write about fish feels like writing about my writing, somehow.

All seems to be well with the world. For now. Or at least till I go to bed tonight, and slip into a dream.

What about you? Do you own an aquarium? Do you write about your fish?

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