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.
