Case #1
It's like there's no truth anymore. No right or wrong. No good or bad. Everything is left some indeterminable shade of gray.
In the Shoyoroku, a Zen text, each koan, a mystic riddle, is given three parts; an introduction, a case and a verse. The three work together to create a larger and more beautiful whole.
Please hold these parts in shared consideration. Let them color, inform and influence each other until, perhaps, you see no difference.
Come to Bed, Puppy
I dreamt a world so pure it’s broken
It’s tears are brittle // It’s people hollow
They have one truth // Their cries of sorrow
-
Diffuse and shadowless // Mute and passionless
Without a shred of hope I turn around to find the same
And turn and turn and turn in the throes of moral revulsion
-
My face has been muddied
I could survive this indignity
If only my spirits weren’t wet
-
A cloudy day bakes everything gray
While a sunny day simply bakes
White skin to burning red
I salute you.
Yes, I was in a balmy southern swamp but was I really there? The giant swoop nose catfish were a wonder beyond belief as they glided under the bridge and wiggled their leading edge but I was reliving our first kiss as if I were in damnation. Their opalescent brown bodies tapered down to a plane that was their only fin and the power behind their strokes carried their tonnage along faster than a man could swim...but I wasn’t in the mood to test that. The chill of the water would have finished me off. I’m not a strong man, a robust man, a mountain of a man...sadly. Such a man would dive into the river, wrap his arms around his newfound friends and take a ride with them. I’d be terrified, honestly, like when I first found myself in bed with her. I’ve never known anything more harmless than her looks at me—so stupidly happy to be with me—but I was petrified. Usually a catfish is less comfortable in it’s river than I am under the sheets but there she was nestled inside them, giddy with joy for having company. She had me on the brink of death. Nothing since has been able to overpower it’s potency.
I got to ask her what I had looked like staring back at her. She said, “Like those baby sea lions we saw at the beach with eyes so large and a face so sad that you want to adopt them and love them forever.” So that’s how it was. She had adopted me...and doing so suited her character perfectly. To her everything is straightforward. It’s like the catfish—you poke them and they jolt or you bring out a harpoon and they dart right off. They’re in tune. And I followed her tune. I did all I could to keep up with it. But every day I was behind and every attempt ended in failure. If it wasn’t the money it was the lifestyle. If it wasn’t the schedule it was the passion. If it wasn’t the attitude it was the mood…in love I am committed but in execution there is much lacking. And it’s proof of her commitment that we were together so long. We loved each other to the end and then it ended. Staying with her would be like the Earth asking the Moon to touch down—all it ever does is move away inch by unstoppable inch. Our relationship was a bridge too far…which was made obvious to me as I stood on a bridge. And what even is a bridge? Rope, wood, stone or steel—no matter—it all falls down. Sixty year life span and one-thousand meters long then bam! God sneezes and it’s poof.
I tried all the tricks and no luck. There’s no cure for being sick from love. She was overwhelming the same as if you were to take a scoop of mud from the riverbank into your hand and smear it over your face. I had no center or grounding that enabled me to be more than a captive to the feelings begotten of her. From her questions to her tone to her attention to her attractions. She would get angry, so I froze. Or become sad, so I froze. Or act flirtatious, so I froze. I was frozen all the time. But my heart was screaming that I loved her. It was always that—never anything to do with what she needed or demanded. How was I supposed to respond? “I’m sorry for being the shadow of a man!” But that wouldn’t make any sense to her. She’s senseless. I’ve read her like a book as I’ve kept her in the dark...and this is what I get for allying myself to my thoughts. The catfish has nothing to confess—it’s faultless. The sea lion pleads and begs—it’s shameless. Me? I’m too proud to have ever cried in front of her. If I was brave I would have told her everything I loved about her.
I try to stay present but these waves of grief sweep me away. I can’t stop them. And at times I find myself back on the bridge staring at the fishes. The water’s brown, same as them but translucent enough to reveal them—the undulating dark splotches in a murkiness pierced by sunlight. It’d be so easy to call it ugly, smelly, distasteful or mundane but I don’t see the world that way ever since I met her. There inside them is her laughter and all the times we touched. They go on in life exactly as they should—rooting through the river for food and keeping on the move by one or two or more. They couldn’t hear me calling to them—their heads are underwater. But she took me on as her first consideration. We watched the same shows, played the same games, shared the same meals, read the same books...and still we were our own people. It’s just that we had that much in common and will remain so. We had every reason to be together and just enough to break it off.
I would have stood there all day musing in such a way but a woman, surprisingly old for having a newborn, parks a stroller beside me and her husband catches up. The two of them dote over the baby and try to direct it’s attention down towards the water. It protests for being sat on the edge of the railing at such a height and exposed to the beating sun. The mother herself has a sunhat and sunglasses on. Every step of the process they butted heads and argued with each other—faster than I can remember. A million little exchanges in creating this experience for their child. The father seems to have some inkling and shades the poor thing with his frame as the mother runs down a trouble-shooting list. Maybe the railing’s hot on it’s skin. Perhaps the smells are upsetting it. It can sense your nerves, try to relax. I bet it’s because it hasn’t had it’s nap. On and on she goes. But most of all I notice how bound together they are. His space is hers and they share the plans for the rest of the day...and who knows how much further—as far as the child’s graduation?
Of course I watched but I’d never be so rude as to intrude. And a shudder went down my spine as I thought to maybe say something. I’m one of those lone men who hold the whole of their pain in their eyes. I recall times in the past when I’d seen such a type throw themselves forward in begging to be included—everyone present willed them to remain in the periphery where they belonged and barely took notice. No, I will not be that. Why ever would I want to put my mark on their day? Leave them to it. Don’t even let on. You’re just here enjoying the catfish—same as everyone. And what would everyone do? They’d whistle the tunes that little kids do and wave at the magnificent creatures lumbering and lazing their way past. So I did just that. I behaved exactly how she liked me to be—light, casual and affable—against all my deeper tendencies.
The baby calmed down but I’m unsure if I was the cause. Anyways, I felt myself hitting the limit and broke away. The proximity was too much for me. There were plenty of other people around that weren’t barbs to my mind. These others, the harmless ones, were mostly snapping photographs. I don’t believe in those. The mind is a camera and it holds onto everything. I’ve never met anything more sentimental. I had a few pictures of her I dared not look at even so much as to delete them. I left the camera roll of my phone alone and even better left the phone in my room or car or anywhere other than my pocket. Better to live as the catfish. The past stays behind and the future rolls in one swish at a time. Do I dare describe her? Tell you her name? No. I refuse to. Those are for her to own. They don’t belong to me or in this story. She’s left me—that’s the truth—and all of it went with her.
I walked deeper into the park towards the river’s mouth where there were many footbridges. Some of them led across to a grassy island in the river’s middle, just barely upstream from the open ocean. People were sat all over it picnicking and I was amazed by this. I imagined they were on a ship ready to launch off and into the horizon. Whole families, groups of friends, sunbathers and young couples. There seemed to be everyone. Then this thought formed in me—from a certain perspective going away might look like being sunk but that’s just the arc of time and the curvature of the Earth. What hole did she put in me? What water am I taking on? None. And I was never one to drink. She gave to me while she was here but now she’s gone and I’ve chosen to haunt myself. Have I not? These people have likely faced more and yet I see them going on. God knows what they’ve survived. That’s what I spent the rest of the day pondering in each and every one of their faces.
Somehow we manage. Everyone manages. And we go our way.
Author’s Commentary
I find that drawing stories from dreams produces good work. Making sense of dreams, shaping the unconscious mind into the conscious mold, riffing with the two separate selves generates novel results that have touches of spontaneity, imperfection and realism in what could so easily come out sterile. Blasting the dry artifice of consciousness to pieces feels right.
But sometimes I can’t will myself back into my dreams.
For instance I had a sequence of them over three days that were very hostile and discomforting and I’ve not been able to bring myself to engage with them. The dream that spawned this story however was serene and full of beauty. Four images survived from it—the baby sea lion, the giant swoop nose catfishes, the woman in the sheets and the people on the grassy island.
Then comes the conscious steering and interlinking of the essential elements.
I’ve written a lot of romance and don’t really want to go in that direction anymore. An objective investigation of romance’s underpinnings finds it to be libido the whole way down. So within the limitations of the four images I explored the aftermath of being cut out of the picture. Desire locks us in and break-ups kick us out. And of course there needed to be a character.
Similar to the libido I feel like I rely too heavily on physical traits to convey personhood and perspective so I left the body to mystique.
After watching and listening to a lot of gray-faced Russian men proselytize the war in Ukraine I’ve noticed that it’s more than just their face that’s been brutalized—it’s their entire affect towards life. I’m one part intrigued by it and one part disgusted. But this is a pretty story so I put the character on his best behavior in a more hopeful time and place. I let him have his peace.
It’s Enough to Turn Your Guts
Sensing the noose &
Armed with a heavy tongue
He spits lead from the heart
Takes in poison with a snarl
Lays his finger on the button
And sends his regards—
I am the death of the world
But he’s lost in the dark
As a fisheries biologist (by day) I deeply appreciated the catfish part lol.