The Man and the Fish

He waits on the ship (if it can be called that), alone; rising and falling with each faint ebb of the tide. In front of him is a simple rod, with a simple string, simply waiting for a fish to catch the line.

In the meantime, the man on the boat is just like any other man, coming from any other family, any other place, from any other walk of life.

In other words, this man could be anybody.

This anybody, (or is it nobody?) looks at the sky and contemplates at everything (or is it nothing?) in particular. It just goes to show that we cannot read the mind of any particular man in any particular place, in any particular point in time.

Therefore, what can we do?

We can only watch.

We can only comment.

We can only react.

Then, what are we in the first place?

This is a question we can easily answer this time. We are but a point of view. We are a concept. Abstract. We exist only to exist.

Now we shall return to the man.

Even if he appears to be fishing, he seems to have dozed off. Such is the nature of this man, who is any singular man among billions. He knows that there is some fish, so he patiently waits for one to fancy his bait. He does not care if there are any other boats, what hypothetical boats would be made of, if those ships have already set sail to different parts of the world, have already experienced all kinds of hardship, if they had the chance to be rewarded with but a glimpse of a breathtaking instant. All that matters is that he is on his relative patch of driftwood, with a relative twig, with naught but the oldest twine that, for some reason, hasn't decided to rot yet, as his line.

It is with these tittered and tattered implements that he decides to catch a fish worthy of a king.

More precisely, a fish that makes kings worthy of being kings

(Or to make him feel like one maybe?)

If that makes any sense at all, not that it may, or may not.

Again, we must return to the man.

We do not know how long he has been sitting there, waiting. However, we can surmise that he was waiting for a long time. How can we conclude this, you ask? We cannot.

We can only assume with what we can see. To humans, this is more commonly known as the act of 'inferring', just as this man is probably trying to get him some herring (har).

But even before this clearly narrative narrative, this man has most likely been waiting for some time. Judging by the flies that circle his body as he constantly waits for his fish, he has come to obtain a sent that is repulsive to all that smell it.

Not that we can.

Yet what is strange about this man is that while the flies circle him like vultures, he makes no move to shoo them away. He is probably afraid that any sudden movement

on his delicate craft of driftwood may scare any potentially attracted fish. Therefore, in silence, he endures the annoyances and pains for the faint hope of a fish.

But why does the man endure an eternity of pains for a measly fish, to the point where we question his ability to feel? What can drive any singular man to sacrifice so much for a singular fish? We do not know. We may never comprehend it. Then again, there is much to the human being we do not understand. We know that human beings have done various things for various reasons. Yet is a fish to be included for the variety of reasons that man has done the most 'valorous', 'stupid', 'brave', or 'terrible' acts? Again, we can only 'infer'.

However, we must ascertain whether that there are fish in the lake at all. While we can do that, we do not desire to do that at the moment as that would make us wet and heavy.

So we glean past the mirror of water that separates this nondescript man from getting carried away by the silent current below.

There are fish. Yet not all seem to see his line.

There are those that notice, yet shy away from the line. There are those that know it is but a ruse and swim away post-haste. There are those that clearly show interest, yet somehow, make no move to snag the squirming, pulsating thing at the end of the line. And finally, after much trial and tribulation, one said fish takes it. However, we do not know all of this as we did not see it. What we did see is the man's line twitch imperceptibly, so much so that the man almost fails to perceive it.

Speaking of which, back to the man.

He notices the change, and some semblance of life comes back to him. He slowly makes his way towards the rod, and, contrary to how we see humans fish, pulls on the rod

gently. He does not force the fish to break through the surface of water which reflects the man's image of himself, no. He tries to be gentle, not disturbing the water as much as he can; trying not to hurt the fish as much as he can. The fish, strangely, does not thrash and struggle, at least, not yet. We do not know it it has any intentions of doing so, but it does not appear to do so. Again, we can only watch, and learn what we can.

The distance between man and fish grows ever smaller, to the point that he can almost reach out to the creature that has snagged his heart. However, when they were just an inch apart, his hand moved too closely just a little too quickly for the fish's liking, and it is only now that they were so close did it begin to resist. Firmly in the fish's jaws (or mouth, maybe?), the man's heart continues to pulsate, while the fish tries to loosen its grip on said organ, which beats on with each passing second.

A struggle ensues; the man tries his damnedest to calm the fish down, to convince it that it means no harm, yet the fish, already agitated, and incapable of direct communication with the man, misunderstands his intent. Furthermore, the man is neither of infinite patience nor understanding. Try as he might (as he has already tried and failed before) to extend both of these, they erode like a layer of permafrost becoming flowing, fluid water. It is this meltdown that causes the fish to finally, painfully, break free of the snare.

The man retrieves his heart, a little smaller, a little weaker. The fish swims on, a little smaller, a little weaker. Little do both know, that a little piece of each other is now

embedded in the other. And yet they continue on with their lives, as they have been doing so for eons on end.

The man picks up his shriveled heart, hooks it, and casts it onto the deep, murky waters once more, hoping to find a fish that would willingly stay with him.

It is now we see a closer look at the man. He has been battered and bruised over the years, in his attempts to catch but a single fish.

Finally, we go under the water, to find ourselves above it once more, with the same scenery, albeit just a little different. It is the same lake, albeit just a little different. It is the same water that we saw with the man, yet the one watching over the line hoping to catch another fish is now a woman, equally hurt, equally scarred.

Yet somehow, we know that both of them will keep waiting.

After all, there are many fish in the sea.