crunchy fish

A story of suffocating and breathing

posted: Feb 02 2005

So…while at a weekend retreat last summer with the youth ministry I volunteer at, I noticed these little shiny things on the ground next to the sidewalk leading to the cafeteria. It was breakfast time on the second day of the retreat.

On the way back after getting my fill of things that looked like scrambled eggs and other slightly recognizable breakfast shapes, I took a minute to bust out my camera and steal a few frames of these poor minnows from their fate of circumstance.

A few kids passed by intrigued at my being completely engrossed in the gross fish on the ground.

Aside from this photo being an image of death, this has turned out to be one of my all time favorite pictures. It just seems to say so much, to the point, and yet leaves plenty of room for wondering.

The last few years I’ve been feeling as if I’m being slowly suffocated, the life sucked out of me from who knows what. So in one sense this image represents where I feel like I am. but… (and there’s always that but) recently I’ve gone through some big changes with work, and other areas of my life and I’m starting to feel the air penetrating my lungs and burning my capilaries again. So in another sense I look at this picture as if to say to the fish, “hang in there…it’ll be over soon and you’ll feel great!” like I can almost sense the faint glimmer of hope in the poor dead fish’s eye and I’m feeling a splinter of responsibility to encourage it to press on.

Sometimes I forget that the fish were already dead by the time I snapped this and I stare at it and completely miss the darkness in it and I see beauty in the life of what was or what could have been, not pain in the suffering that is. I look at this and can’t help but think: as much as I feel like I’m ‘dying’ or ‘suffocating,’ I know I’m better off than this and I’m much more than just bait, or feeder-fish to some gigantic invisible thing that’s trying to rush the course of entropy in my life, and the world.

Plus, the angle and the focal point just mesmerizes me.

-- jase