in which the fish regards the blue, the brown and all the white

It is a long journey by sea, even for this fish.

This fish,

who, with a mighty and muscular sweep of the tail,

launches out into the open sea.

At this, the sea merely raises one salty brow and shrugs.

So be it.

Says the sea,

If you insist on spinning way beyond your normal trajectory, you will find what you wish. 

So.

This fish

 spins out past the known lands and grows and grows, spinning like a translucent thing through the vast depths where the sea becomes the darkest of greens, where the dried echoes of humpbacks still hang suspended like curtains of air, and heads north.

The sea is silent,  shrugging  a turquoise shoulder as the fish spins on, further, like a torpedo through a cloud of ribbon fish, as the waters warm. The sea speaks only once again:

You will see much that you like not, fish, but you will see also much that you love.

The fish finds itself in clouds of brown, where no brown should be, and the realms of land and water  become blurred. A crowd of frightened black and white cows, hoofs kicking, rolls their eyes as they float out a river delta. Chairs and boxes and shoes tumble through the clouds.

At one point the fish feels the salt disappar altogether and sees the buried matte of grass,  a field, fences.

Huge petals of soils spread out into the sea, where land and water do not seem to be able to tell each oter apart any longer and boundaries dissolve. Ribbon fish attempt to be civil to swimming cows, but the cows roll their eyes in terror.

The fish flees the silting of her gills and continues even further  north, through vast archipeligos,  past huge and friendly turtles and ever diminishing schools of other silver fish. The fish takes the shape now of some huge hybrid creature, with silvery scales the size of saucers, and long, thin, translucent teeth like those of a cat. The fish travels through brightly illumined azure waters of the equatorial seas, all the while heading north. All the while, spinning and dipping with great sweeps of the huge transparent tail, the fish swims so far, so far all the while, until the waters grow cold and dark again.

How to proceed, how to proceed,

 laughs the sea to itself, as the fish considers its position and the iciness of the viridian depths into which it has arrived. 

There are the Straights Of Korea to consider, and the murderous bays and troughs along the southern coast of Honshu:  perhaps this absurd fragment of fishbone,  foolishness and fish-meat will head into northerer waters.

face to face with vladivostok. Within sniffing distnace of Siberia...

And the fish considers this, because all the oceanic considerations are felt by the fish  deep in her fish bones, that skeletal leaf-frond detecting all the thoughts of the sea itself.

 And the fish, despite having felt the mighty cold of Russia once before, nonetheless turns its pointed silver face northwards away from Honshu, and up towards Hokkaido.

And here is the most dangerous realm in all the sea 

for any kind of fish. 

Casting her large fish head to one side, she listens out for the mournful sounds of slaughtered cetaceans, and creeps to the north, away from this southernmost isle of japan, and slithers her bulk past the Sakharin islands, around the tip,

 and into the 

Sea of Japan.

Japan....

In which the fish speaks of stones and bones and silence.

Fish,

in case you were not aware, 

have no ears.

It would be foolish to expect a fish to offer access to their heads via holes,

they have smooth heads stretched with silver drums of skin and scale. Fish swim like torpedoes, along the path of no resistance.

What use have they of flapping ears, to cause drag and all manner of problem? None at all, I would think.

 Fish ears stretched like tympani on either side of the fish's long head, silver and smooth. You may have seen them, nacreous ovoids, turning apricot this way, mauve that way, depending on the tilt of the fish. There is no hole, no tunnel into the fish's head, no entrance into which the sea might pour and fill the fish with brine, flood its dreams, drown its thoughts. There is only tightly sealed silver fish skin.
Beneath the silver discs lie bones they call hearing stones. Stones to collect the sounds of the sea. The stone which orients us, much like, as Graeme Burnett points out, the Islamic qibla, the stone to which all Muslims turn and face for prayer. Our inner stones tell us which way is up, which way is down, and how far beneath the ocean you are swimming.

Otoliths:

Pebbles in the head, pearls with which to gather music, safely inside the head of the fish.  It is said that a sea-bass has huge pebbles but humans have microscopic ones, a sac of tiny pebbles hanging inside the head.

As the years go by this fish's head strains and creaks to keep the sea out. My head works hard to close the entrance to my brain, to shut the sea out. The sea continues to poke long slithery fingers into my ears and tamper coldly with my brain, to softly clack against my ear stones, rattle them softly with a whispery rumpled sound. When I am back on land, the sea hides cunningly inside the ever-narrowing passages which lead to my ear stones. Walls of bone slowly close.




Cyprinus carpio (Common carp)
                                   (Doug Ferrell, New South Wales Department of Primary Industries.)


I try to seal my ears, to keep the sea out of my head, since having small oceans in one's ears is not a pleasant thing: it will whisper things to you as you go about your business, and distract you from the world of air. Every now and again an aquatic shift will echo largely as you reach across the table, or navigate your way across town, far from the conforting thrum of the restless ocean in which you swim.
No, I stuff my ears with waxes and plugs and wads of silicone, but the sea has become very cunning and contrives to pick them out in silent glee. I even took to using fluorescent orange wads of stuff which glowed brightly when they sank to the bottom and I was able to retrieve them, but gradually my supply was depleted. My bones continue to shift , and it becomes harder and harder to poke anything in them at all.

The stones in my head are drowning.

The sea worries the rocks underwater, tosses and pokes them as they are revealed by the great sucking of tide against sand.  rock shelf and boulder, pebble and shard: all are the palest of green, like naked things untouched by the sun.

The rocks settle in the faintest of hollows, and roll about, from one edge to another, swirling and tossing, around and around, the sound of rock against rock agreeable aquatic clunk, an undewater percussion, travelling through the pale green like an orchestra of sorts. After some time, they create a lovely round rock pool.

The sea stirs and worries the stones on their rock plates, and the hollows grow larger and deeper. the stones grow rounder and become, in time, like eggs in a basket, worn and beautiful: a nest of stone eggs. When the sea runs out these pale clusters sit in the sunlight and children play in them, lifting out the stones before parents call to them the dangers of blue-ringed octopi, the sharpness of urchin spines. Children lift out the stones, and rub them against the rockshelf, to see what happens: the rockshelf, unused to such reatment and more used to slumbering beneath a blanket of snad and the weight of the sea, is brittle and soft. The children dip their fingers in the wet powdered rock and draw with it. The sea-stones carve holes in the rocks.

My world grows quiet, the sounds in my world, it seems, have taken on the aquatic softness of sounds far beneath the surface of the sea. I peer into faces and watch them speak.  I worry that they will suddenly discern, just beneath my translucent skin,  my scales, my fins, the silver of my surface, the strangeness of my bones. 

Epinephelus lanceolatus (Giant grouper)

It is almost Christmas. 

I am standing, with all the other parents at the formal speech night, all of us singing. I can hear my own singing in my head, ringing agreeably. 

I like to sing, and I like to sing amongst other singing voices, so I sing clearly and strongly. Suddenly I worry that I am singing tooo loudly, and dart my gaze from side to side, but nobody is looking.  Emboldened, I continue. I pretend I am in a grand cathedral, until the carol finishes, and I must be seated with all the others. I watch and endless stream of royal blue blazers filing past, and listen to speeches. 

To my surprise, one of them makes me cry. A tale of kindness and generosity in an Indian orphanage run by an ex-student. Afterwards I walk through magnolias and gardenias in the warm dark air. I walk away from the sounds of father asking son to work harder, study harder, listen harder. the dark swallows me up like a tropical pond and I am glad for the way my fish ears filter sounds so well these days.

Next day at home, I sing. I sing and wonder what I sound like, since I am no longer sure.  I walk down to the sea and find it as flat s anything I have ever seen and I poke my newest earplugs far into my narrow ear canals, to cushion my ear stones, to keep out the sea.

 I swim all the way to the headland, but when I turn around to swim home I find a headwind has sprung up, and I have the devil's own time getting back.

in which the fish is hot, the fish is cold

I am at Hot Yoga.


I am looking in the mirror, focusing on just one point, as I am told.
Not at the point between my eyes, as I am told, but at a point lower, where things are black and indistinct, just near my waist. I focus my gaze there, that is a good point to gaze, I think, because it is just a patch of black, and indistinct.


The mirror is vast, and runs the entire length of the front of the room.
It is the cosmic mirror, they say, and there are many of us gazing into it. None of us look at each other, we are just aware. I try ever so hard to be present, to chase thoughts out of my head, but
of course, my gaze flickers around before I can still it. My vision briefly registers the presence of so many bodies. The one next to me, like all the other women, features a pale and slender waist, an uninterrupted stare. Today I note also that I am surrounded by men, which is unusual. We all begin, moving, just as we are told, as one entity, listening to the words, trying to join together mind, body, breathing.




When I first came, I couldn't look at the mirror at all. I hid behind others and stared at their reflection instead of mine, because I am the only person in this room who does not have a slim physique. My body rolls and pouts and sticks out at all angles and the bags beneath my eyes catch the light and make shadows. I began by staring at the reflection of the pretty girl next to me, and pretended I was her. At the end of the first week I was right behind a very gorgeous young lady, all in white, with her boyfriend. I am sure her poise was shaken when, in the middle of triangle pose, she let out a small, but distinct fart. I felt for her, but I laughed silently all the same. That's what farts are for, after all: laughing at. 
She was mortified.








When I first came, I covered myself up with long tights and baggy tops but the heat was dreadful, and my whole body went into a kind of distress. All around me was pale, shining skin, sparkling with moisture from the infernal heat. Waves of panic invaded me from time to time as I stolidly enacted the motions, trying my best to balance, trying my best just to stay in the room, the heat was terrible: sweat flowed like rivers from my every limb, my face so red I looked like a scarlet jellyfish. The first time I went there was with my friend, The Little Hen, who was very good at yoga and I watched her from the corner of my eye, realising quickly that talking and looking were not permitted. I watched her stand on one leg and place her head on the knee of her outstretched other. She never wavered, though I could barely manage a few seconds on one leg, and stumbled repeatedly, sweat running into my eyes. I'd hoped this yoga might be a way of fixing my badly assembled skeleton, fixing my crooked little feet, making me straighter, but that first time I thought I would die and could not look in the mirror.


Next day I went back.
And the next. I was immediately hooked.
It would not defeat me, but I didn't look into the mirror for six months. It's been a year and a half now, and I am working my way to looking myself in the face.




Strange how you are so extreme, said Kath. You're either swimming in icy water or poaching yourself in that diabolical room. Can't be good for you. 
Eija said: You look great, and I am coming too.
She did. She still does.




I am looking in the mirror, focusing on just one point.
The young man just ahead of me, to my right, wears small blue trunks, his hair in a ponytail and is just on the edge of my vision. A young girl is ahead of me, just to my left. Her ponytail is long and shining, her waist tiny, her tummy neat and flat. Directly ahead is me myself,  in small shorts and a singlet, both black, my dimply tummy beneath, hidden,  my lumpy physique looking just a touch more petite than usual, because this bit of the cosmic mirror is slightly concave.
I smile to myself: I am right at the front, gazing into the mirror, people all around me. We begin and everybody moves in time: breathing, stretching, bending. Names in sanskrit, instructions, the same every day. The words of the guru over and over, we enact the most strenuous of poses, compressing this, stretching that.




Standing Bow.
The first time I tried standing bow I fell and almost knocked someone over and had to stand side on to all the others and hold the ballet bar, because it was impossible to balance. I had to show my body what it might feel like if we ever got this right. Today I lean forward towards the cosmic mirror with one arm outstretched, my other arm behind me, holding my foot and drawing my it above my head: I am a bow. I pull my self taut and stand strong, and I hold this and breathe. I pull air into my lungs and hold my foot high above my head, willing my foot not to move. None of us fall.




I look into the mirror.
That's the thing: I look into the mirror.


I am the biggest woman here and I am looking into the mirror and my foot is as high over my head as the
beautiful girl with the ponytail. I stand perfectly still and taut, foot above my head, arm outstretched.

I used to see swimming in the icy sea in the winter dawn as a test, a challenge. I thought if I could do that, I could face anything, and I suppose I was right in many ways. It taught me that pain is brief and that everything is in the mind. The cold only lasts a minute and after that it's like a wonderful buzzing of the skin, a rushing of blood, blowing strings of air into the pale morning water and listening to the sounds.

I am looking in the mirror, thinking of cold water. I see myself, misshapen but cheerful, hopeful, looking back. I can hold my ankles and place my face onto the floor. I can bend backwards and almost see the floor, but most of all, I can look into the mirror. Soon, I will look into my own eyes. One day soon.




when I am finished I race down to the sea and throw myself in like a blob of molten lava. 
The sea hisses. 
The sea grips my scalp and flings my air about as I stay submerged, looking for a grip on the sea floor  so I might hang head-down for hours, but there is only sand so I dive down and down and down until the sea has cooled my flaming  cheeks. The sea does not know what to say about this, and keeps silent when I am on my long hauls through the water these days, though I do know that the sea has enough trouble at the moment with all the storms and the whale migration. There is so much to occupy a body of water at this time of year that I  hadn't considered my steaming hot dumpling act would attract too much oceanic attention, but I still get a good slap on the head to remind me who's boss.




So, my small triumphs buoy me along. The sea in my hair, my gaze in the mirror. My faultless backstroke, my motionless Standing Bow. 
I cannot help marvelling in the miracle of breathing.  Of taking breath, and letting it go. 
In, and out again, pulling air down into my body, where it travels through tiny branches into my blood, into the sea of me. 
Of releasing great soft cushions of air at the bottom of the sea and watch them wobble upward until they break that quivering meniscus,
and disappear.


I am looking into the mirror and I am taking no notice of my fat little legs and the bags beneath my eyes. Instead, I luxuriate in the fact that i can stand here at all, and that I can breathe. I am looking into the cosmic mirror pulling air into myself.


Endlessly, happily: 
in, out, in.