A couple of Mother’s Days ago, Adultish-Male Child gifted me a fish tank.
I still have the tank and three of the original six Cichlids: two bright orange blood parrots who have outgrown two stone caves and one chunky, gray-and-black-striped convict who prefers to sleep in the plants.
These three prominent residents monitor the two algae suckers whose jobs are never done. I feel sorry for the suckers, sometimes. I couldn’t get any work done if someone were always hovering over my shoulder—
Wait.
I look up at Little Miss Muse. Hovering over my shoulder.
“Don’t even go there.” She nods at the screen. “Keep writing. You’ve got one brain cell left, and it’s about fried for the day. Better get this done while you can.”
I’m stunned any of them are still alive. I fish tank about as well as I cook…
All the Cichlids fight. With each other to the point of daily lip-locking tug-of-war. With the rocks to the point of terrain-shifting chaos. With the bubble stone to the point of unhooking the bubble stone. With my hand when I must fix something inside the tank to the point of me losing my cool with a species I could easily flush down the toilet, but for some reason, I keep fixing their tank.
However, when it’s time to eat (or when it’s not, and they’re being manipulative crooks), they wiggle like excited puppies, grin, and wave their fins until the pansy humans make it rain manna from Heaven.
I suppose this cutie behavior is why I keep fixing their tank.
And I do enjoy watching them. I wonder what they’re thinking. Do they remember the tank at the pet store or the breeder before that? Do they remember the three other cichlids they arrived here with and ponder, “Whatever happened to Neil? I mean, one day he was here, the next day, he was netted and never came back.” I wonder if they are bored with their forty-gallon abode and wish for more volume.
But what I really wonder is, when I sit here on the couch, what they’re thinking about as all three of them are lined up, staring at me. This behavior started a year ago or so. I’ll be watching TV or reading and glance over at them, and… I’m being watched.
To see if they really are staring at me or if it’s a coincidence, I’ll wave at them.
Cue the puppy wiggles. If I return to my activity, they return to the lineup. Sometimes they line up horizontally. Other times, they stack themselves, one on top of the other.
And stare.
We can play this game for quite a while before they get bored with me and start fighting with something again.
During our staring contests, I believe they must wonder why I never bother floating. Perhaps they consider me a slightly mobile barnacle—always stuck to some surface.
Do they wonder who provides my manna?
They watch me with all the curiosity a cichlid can muster as I vacuum. I wonder if they think my algae sucker must be an older model since it needs to be plugged in. Their algae suckers are cordless.
A couple of times a week, someone exits the water level during feeding time and goes airborne. Sometimes, I must swat one back into the tank lest they become dinner for one of the cats. I wonder if they simply want to see what my tank is like. Perhaps upgrade to more square footage (cubed volume?).
A large part—maybe the most essential part—of writing for me is getting inside the mental square footage of my characters. Pondering and wondering with someone else’s five senses. Swim around in their tank, so to speak.
I used to be able to play this game, day in and day out, day after day. Sit down, write, walk away. Repeat.
The danger now—especially in the last year—is that I sometimes dive so far into a fictional persona that I exit my water level, so to speak, and risk becoming prey to emotions best left to the character.
I have enough “feels” to deal with. I don’t need to upgrade to more emotional square footage. Times like these, it’d help to have someone near to swat me back into my reality.
The whole fictional writing experience now leaves me quite… tanked.
A thousand-word scene may have taken me half an hour a few years ago. Now? I couldn’t tell you. In these days of grief, I have the attention span of a goldfish. I have to take more breaks. More breaks means more opportunities to lose my train of thought.
But the thing about tanks? Clean them, fuss with the filter, feed the residents, and eventually, things settle.
The water clears. The muck stops swirling. The fish go back to wiggling like you hung the moon—or at least changed the hood’s lightbulb.
That’s how writing is going right now.
Not in the great sweeping waves I once rode, but in tiny, stubborn cycles of feeding the scene, filtering the plot, clearing the muck…
It’s slow, but it’s still progress, even if I feel like a barnacle most days.
Little Miss torments the convict cichlid, poking at the glass with her grape gum-covered finger. The fish bristles his fins. “Still got fight. So do you.”
Not sure about fight at the moment. At the moment, I feel waterlogged.
But I’m not done.
Because even on the tanked days, I can still wiggle.
Though I doubt I look anything like a happy puppy when I do.
