Ruminations on a future quintuple-murder-suicide

created Wednesday, April 5th, 2006 3:07:34pm

Ever been sportfishing? It's a stultifying experience, a clash between
endless horizons of time afloat and the crystallization of a
lifetime's exhiliration (that is, the lifetime of the fish) in a few
short gasps. We, as the fisher-people, view this as a glorious
conquest: Regaling each other immediately with outsized tales of the
battle that had taken place between the man with the rod and the fish
with the hook buried THROUGH his lip, under the jaw, dragging him
inexorably by his very bone structure toward everything his twitching
muscles fear. I've been strapped into that chair, felt that moment
when you and the fish are one, and maybe that you, too, are a fish,
the other piscean, this spun nylon cord our impossible tail. 

We view it that way. It tastes better when we eat them if we give them
a little credit.

For the fish, it is much more an exercise in futility. A creature of
instinct, he knows nothing more than his very existence has betrayed
him. Everything that, until this point, had allowed him to swim, to
respirate, to BE - now it has been his downfall. This betrayal is the
cancer in your non-smoking mother's lung. It is your neighbor's
heater's extinguished pilot light on a cold winters' night. It is
buried deep in the car that hit your new puppy, feeding on a few hairs
and some blood that the pressure wash and wax just couldn't get off.
And it's in you, too.

In fact, it IS you. This spectre haunts you, haunts me, haunts the
fish. We'll all be caught sooner or later - why do we want it to
happen in a predictable way? Do we simply wish not to be fooled by
what we've been told will save us? I think that most people are about
as reflective on this issue as the fish is. I think that's a shame.

Don't fear the hook. Look, if you're a fish, and you DON'T get caught,
what happens? Something bad, eventually. Maybe your liver fails. I'm
no icthyologist, but I know Cods have livers, and I know that livers
fail. Ipso Facto, YOU'RE STILL DEAD. I say, embrace the hook -
figuratively, literally, I don't care. Enjoy that fucking cigarette,
Jack. Unprotected sex really DOES feel better, and anyone who hasn't
realized that yet needs to drink more. Greasy cheeseburgers,
skydiving, and heroin? Yes, yes, and OHMYGODYES, respectively. Just do
it, people. 

You're just gonna die, anyway, and if I have to listen to one more
little shit whine about how fucked up and sad his middle-class white
American existence is, I might just become a fisher of men before I
bite down, myself.

back to rant index