FISH III: I am an avatar

This continues the story about a young man called 'Fish'. In 2011 he quit his job because he hated it so much and ventured forth into foreign lands to seek enlightenment and a lifestyle where he could retire at the age of 26 (see A Short Story, A Parable, A Tale of a Man Who Hates His Job)  only to find himself lonely and isolated and questioning what exactly he was doing with his life (Sink or Swim). Now, March 2012 the story continues...

FISH RETURNS TO THE CITY and is invited and obliged to tag along to various dinner parties with young adults his age. He doesn't really know any of them, at least he didn't really before and given the setting doubted he ever would. But his friends - the one's that he did know - thought they owed it to him to invite him to such places. He had gone for years without "regular civilized social interaction" and they thought a decent amount of reintroduction was necessary.

So he sat and ate his meal carefully with the cutlery, smiled and laughed when prompted, like all the others when they laughed - such wonderful and exaggerated laughs!

Everything with an exclamation mark!

The conversation so witty!

Sighs so poignant!

Jobs so interesting!

Holidays so brilliant!

The drama!

Excitement!

Excitement!!!!!!!!

He didn't feel at ease in such settings and wondered if anyone else at the table actually did. Amidst the conversation he scanned his eyes around the room at all the knick knacks and posters and paintings and statues and empty bottles of alcohol that should have been put in the recycling months ago but seem to like being left out on display.

"Why?" fish asks himself. 

He finds himself at various friend's homes in the days that ensue. They have not seen him for so long and long for his company but soon he is sat down on their couch and a downloaded cartoon episode of the Last Airbender or something along those lines is put on. He watches as the Avatar who is specially skilled bends and manipulates water, fire, earth and air. She moves to the city where she wants to extend her skill and training but there is a protest in the streets and they chant desires to rid the city of Airbenders because they are detrimental to society and cannot be trusted.

Fish does not care for the show but his friends are enthralled. He looks out the window and thinks of suggesting doing something outside later otherwise he knows that another one of these shows will be put on after this one has finished. These were his geeky friends. This is what they always did. Bored, he googles the meaning of avatar. One of the meanings interests him;

2.

an embodiment or personification, as of a principle, attitude, or view of life.

  

The next day it is sunny and he rides a bus through town. On the bus half of the passengers sit staring into their cell phones and three quarters are plugged into iPods. Outside Fish notices that there is a coffee shop almost every four shops and they are all full with people sitting in front of them sipping their medicated beverages. He refuses to be like them. Reliant. Not in control. Suckered into and addicted to an expensive and unnecessary social norm.

The night before a news broadcast had stated that there were plans to send people to Mars because life is habitable there. There were already people in training for the harsh living conditions but they were excited that the place was 'liveable'.

Why send people to Mars when you can live somewhere like Arizona? is all he had thought about since hearing such news.

He wants to take all his clothes off in the bus.

It's the answer, he thinks.

No pretense. No hiding. The truth will set you free as long as you are willing to look at it. Everyone needs to do it.

But he reaches his bus stop and walks down the street and down a small garden path to his friends door and as he presses the buzzer he gets the feeling that he is an avatar. 

He just needs to harness his skills.

He hears rushing footsteps growing louder and the door swings open and his friend, all dressed up, envelops him in a huge excitable hug.

'It's so nice out' she says. 'Let's go get a coffee!'

Sink or Swim: A Short Story, A Parable, A Tale of a Man Who Does Not Want to Die Alone

The following is a continuation of the blog entitled: A Short Story, A Parable, A Tale of a Man Who Hates His Job.
In this edition, Fish is in Uganda (after leaving the refugee camp in Kenya). His life is going to plan and he has found a lifestyle that he can fund without need of work. He is happy in his accomplishment, but one day the stars and universe force a change in his ideology...

Sink or Swim: A Short Story, A Parable, A Tale of a Man Who Does Not Want to Die Alone

Fish walks down the dusty beat up streets of Kampala watching life occur around him. It is a day like any other of the past 3 months he has been in Uganda. Street sellers lay their knock-off Nike on the pavement, women courier objects on their heads, children peddle unwanted souvenirs to tourists, and yet again, a man has hopped off the bus with a live chicken.


One thing is different however.


He has an overwhelming emptiness in his soul. He is restless, his life in torment.


Fish does not know where these feeling had come from and curses their sudden manifestation. He had enjoyed life and was happy the preceding days and months, but all of a sudden he found himself struck with a bipolar tick. It triggered a change in his thinking and ripped apart any sense of inner peace. He could no longer function properly, his mind hijacked by thieves, his body gravitating toward self pity. He was all of a sudden vulnerable, insecure and unsure.


He tries to determine the trigger, the thing that set off the physical, spiritual, and emotional storm. One thing he was sure of: It happened today. He thinks back upon the events of the morning; getting up; taking coffee at a corner stall in his neighbourhood; walking into town. He thinks about things he had seen along the way; kids playing football in the dirt; women carting various objects on their heads; a taxi driver speeding around a corner and nearly taking out an elderly man; joyous newlyweds celebrating outside a church; knock off goods peddled to tourists.


There was nothing unusual about the day or its events. It was like any other except for the fact that Fish's soul had been slowly ripped out from inside of him and placed into a washing machine of knives. He leans against a wall and slides his body down until it reaches the pavement. People rush past briskly, life on the main streets of Kampala to different clocks. He watches the mesmerizing patterns made from the light in between spaces of passing legs. Fish starts to feel an empathy for this space and a longing to devour it or give it use. He looks up at the sun, so bright yet hazy in the sky and watches it's rays illuminate the Ugandan flag that sits atop a building across the street.


'What the hell is wrong with me?' asks Fish.


It is then when a man stands by the exit of the building he is leaning against. In one hand is a rolled up newspaper and Fish takes note of the date which is showing. The man looks down at Fish and acts surprised when he realizes he is white.


"You okay Mizungu?" he asks.


"I'm fine" replies Fish lying.


The man walks off.


Suddenly everything is clear.


Fish curses himself for not realizing sooner. No wonder he felt the universal pull of tides, no wonder he felt the shattering of a thousand hearts and subsequent remodeling into one. It was the centre of the Piscean month, his birthday.


Inside of Fish are two scales, each one equally balanced; hopes and fears, strengths, weaknesses and insecurities. He feels them start to spin clockwise about the fulcrum on which they are balanced, at first slowly, then with increasing speed until everything was a rotational blur, orbital, with centripetal force. Fish knows that there is nothing he can do about it. A life force coursed through every artery, infecting every cell. Today, more than any other day he feels a directional pull on his soul. It is a forced reflection on previous years, a reconciliation of choice and destiny, a realignment and setting straight. Today Fish feels the essence of his soul. He is agitated and knows that he should not be in Uganda. 


Fish rises to his feet and finds himself amidst a pedestrian sea. He desires to be strong but finds himself being insanely needy. He feels various aspects of his body walk off in various directions but he himself goes nowhere. His head is full of conflict; scattered thoughts, lies and ideologies. He is unsure what they mean and what to believe and in questioning their original source, scrutiny becomes the undertow in which they are all drawn. There is only one thing Fish can trust and that is the feeling inside. Everything else was an externally pinned vector to a broken compass. Feeling pulled in so many directions, Fish's instincts are to run.


And so he forces himself through Kampala's crowded dusty streets. He doesn't know where he is going but knows that he must get there fast. He sidesteps souvenir peddlers, leaps over knock-off Nike products and squeezes in-between cages of soon to be executed animals; his cadence forever in debt to desire for movement. In the external act of doing something, he ignores the pain inside. He runs past the church he passed earlier, the bride and groom now dancing, through the soccer game, around corners in a rat warren of alleyways. Eventually he arrives back at his fifth floor shanty town apartment and collapses on his back exhausted inside the front door, breathing like a dog.
Above him the ceiling turns fuzzy and darkens with stars appearing -two opposing fish- before reverting back to their normal appearance. He can't remember the last time he felt his lungs and body burning so badly, his head so light. Panting for oxygen, Fish decides he enjoys the pain as it destroys any connection to the emotional psychobabble in his system. At the point of near complete exhaustion he feels more alive and focussed than ever. His head is clear and his thoughts pure. He starts to see visions; the good Lord bruised and broken on a cross; children running through a field; a woman in a flowing dress. He finds himself overcome with a desire to live and love. It spurns a necessity for connection and work.


He realizes how misled he had been in his desire to alienate himself from the world, to want to live in a refugee camp and amongst locals that didn't speak his language. In doing so he forwent love, a family and meaningful social connection.


'What am I doing?' thinks Fish. 


With breath returning he gathers his things and shoves them in his back pack.


'Damn my Piscean sign' he thinks.


Once again he is on the move. He has the notion of either sinking or swimming as he closes the door behind him. The precariousness in doing so makes him feel more in love than ever.


He dreams of home but does not know where that is.

The glyph for Pisces represents two fish swimming in opposite directions. The notion of savior, martyr and redeemer all belong to the motif of Pisces. There are no boundaries and no superiority amongst people. Pisces is concerned with universal truth, wholeness and unity. Famous for their escapist tendencies, they tend to slip away from the harsher realities of life. As a rule, they tend to drift through life and can be vague and dreamy. Pisceans are known for their instincts and flood of emotional and imaginative in-pouring and out-pouring. The twelfth sign is attuned to the deep undercurrents of the collective psyche. Bound up in chaos and blurred reality, the fishes need to protect themselves from exploitation. Alcoholism and drug addiction express their powerful longing to go back home. In true chameleon fashion, Pisces is as changeable as the sea and often flow with the current. The individual born under Pisces is often ultra sensitive, compassionate and kind. On the surface they represent a delicate vulnerability and fragility. Often they have an otherworldly quality and truly empathetic nature. Pisces completes the phase of the four social signs, and dissolves all boundaries that existed. Piscean sensitivity can descend into self-pity and they turn to drink, day-dreaming and fantasy. The body is often experienced as a prison, and they regularly fall into illness and depression, instability and delusions. Art, music, poetry and the imagination express the ‘hidden’ watery depths and the treasure lost and buried at the bottom of the sea. It helps to heal some of that ‘homesick’ feeling that they are often afflicted with.