Journal: A Fish’s Dream
As I progress slowly on my books, writing, and publishing goals, certain lateral triggers come into play. For example, I had a traumatic experience recently, which laid me waste for almost a day.
My response to trauma is continuous sleep and an overwhelming spurt of creativity. The sleep and the spurt make me vulnerable in body and mind, but those are my natural recovery paths.
2023 has been a year of high hopes only to be let down, but an unwavering focus towards our goals. In this context, this recent traumatic, completely unexpected event resulted in a rather different push — a seed of thought, that started slowly growing on me.
I love watching fishes swim in aquariums — beautiful, calm, colorful, and slow, with a calming effect along with my wife. They bring a weird flavor of peace, as if the world was normal, and things would be fine.
Most problems start with human thoughts. Thoughts are the seeds of action, and how they manifest results in the evolution or devolution of the human species. If somebody goes through a mental trauma, it means that there is an event or a trigger that results in a hyper-response, which within the four walls of our existence is contained as a private matter. So, let us let things be. But what matters is the manifestation process, which I just talked about — the disproportionate response to a trigger that has often made me vulnerable.
The recovery is a struggle, but it puts me in an orbit of the ‘overwhelming spurt of creativity’, which again, could be my imagination. So, let us talk about this spurt.
The calming effect of fish nonchalantly swimming in aquariums or in coral reefs brought me two different visions. One was an old Chinese script that I had read during my COVID days, again as part of another unusual creative spurt. It was about how dreams manifest and transpose with reality. The second is a map of how a fish would see the world. These two brought me to a creative crossroads — and that is how the words ‘ A Fish’s Dream’ were born.
Let us talk about each of these two visions now.
a) The Fish’s Map of the World
The ocean real estate takes center stage, unlike the normal human view of seeing land as the centerpiece of real estate. A fish can swim continuously through large swaths of water, and therefore, is the largest real estate owner on this planet. Africa, Australia, and Antarctica are mere islands, dwarfed by the size of the pond that makes the oceans. The large continents are confined to the fringes.
This view dismantles the human-centric view of the world and makes our conflict petty. The largest human empire ever, the Mongolian Empire would constitute less than 8% of the overall surface area of Earth.
We evolved from fish, but they are still the undisputed owners of the world. However, we intrude in their lives, even going to the extent of destroying them and their ecosystem.
These are my initial thoughts, but slowly form the seed of this creative project.
Just on a side note:
The fish’s map was designed by a Renaissance man who also invented the skyways of Minneapolis and the secret weather balloon that caused the Roswell Incident. Dr Spilhaus was not just a distinguished meteorologist and an oceanographer, but also a prolific inventor.
b) A Fish’s Dream
Fish’s views and dreams of this world must be so contrasting to ours. They are known to have smaller attention spans ( The Gold Fish effect) which is an increasing trait in humans due to information explosion, devices, and social media. But what about their dreams?
Here is a link to this question: https://lnkd.in/g_V5A9EK
I discovered two books with a similar title: Fish Dreams ( story of an autistic child and her mother) and Fish of Dreams — a poetic interpretation of each fish’s life.
But this title is stuck with me: ‘A Fish’s Dream’ — it could be the title of one of my upcoming works — A Poetry Collection or Fiction work. Let us wait and see. But for now, just a small picture.
I am more likely to lean on the ‘Butterfly’s Dream’ — Zhuangzi, an ancient Chinese work, from my favorite period — The Warring States Period of China. Here is the piece.
The Butterfly Dream
The most famous of all Zhuangzi stories — “Zhuang Zhou Dreams of Being a Butterfly” — appears at the end of the second chapter, “On the Equality of Things”.
昔者莊周夢為胡蝶，栩栩然胡蝶也，自喻適志與。不知周也。
Once, Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering about, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know that he was Zhuang Zhou.
俄然覺，則蘧蘧然周也。不知周之夢為胡蝶與，胡蝶之夢為周與。周與胡蝶，則必有分矣。此之謂物化。
Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou. But he didn’t know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuang Zhou. Between Zhuang Zhou and the butterfly, there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.
— Zhuangzi, chapter 2 (Watson translation)[18]
Source: Wikipedia
The idea of getting into a fish’s shoes (or fish’s fin) and living a life, including their perspectives and dreams is spinning inside my head.
“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Fishes are older than us. They have different thinking, different body forms, and different dreams and perspectives, therefore, they are mysterious. So, let us explore a fish’s dream.
~Ashok Subramanian © 2023
