Wild Fish

People closer to me use to say I have the emotionally detached spirit of wild horse. I am always willing to go. It never seems like I would abandon myself to the control of any force indefinitely. I am always like moving to a prettier meadow, a shelter land, and at no time likely to stay within the range of the uncomfortable.

By definition it is different from escaping. Once, as he leaves, the horse never seems wroth. His face is weakly eloquent, so, whenever runs away he looks nothing but unaffected. Not even relieved. He only immediately runs freely towards a better place. He would never employ time trying to get used with a specific situation. He still has the whole world to try, and even having no sense of death – or, end – he is not striving to avoid the picture of an eternal life of escaping. He just promptly gallops to a better paradise, with clearer lakes and fresher grass. The wind in his mane is the only evidence of whatever he is possible feeling.

… But the fish idea is additionally interesting.

By the way, have you ever heard of Astrid van der Veen?

She is a lovely young Dutch singer with and angel-like voice. Astrid is my favorite female voice ever and one of the tree people who I believe write lyrics worth reading. She turns voice from an ordinary musical instrument into a stream of practical and unhypocritical philosophy for a life.

She has a certain song named No Sand. Despite the gloomy lyrics and melody, No Sand is touching, deep and real. It was written during a bad period of her life, together with the remaining songs of Seamless Borderline – the album. Among all lyrics, it is the one which stronger suggest her will to overcome that unhappy stage – just as she did, by the way.

In this song she refers to “the free” as a wild fish. The entire song revolves the fish idea and the most important tools to keep him free: his fins. Those are the ones he needs to defend from whoever attempts to hit him.

And whenever I think of a wild fish – living thousands of kilometers away from the mainland, free to go anywhere bellow the mirror-like ocean surface, slippy and slipping through the water as if softly flying in the air – I realize that this is the freest thing I could ever imagine. The fish doesn`t give a shit to the world. And he does not even appear impressed with this condition. He is unaffected, because he is simply unable to ever think of been captive. He does not even know what a cage is.

To be honest I do agree with – I am also proud of – the wild horse stereotype, but I still have a couple of more years to become a fish, I think. Despite fish and horse are clearly similar when metaphorically described, the “flying in water” idea kind of feels way shelter than the hoof hitting the grass.

In fact the small victories along the way have been giving me more pride than the final achievement will possible give but, by the end, I just want to be a man walking by street and appear to whoever glance me as if I have been forever swimming free like a wild fish in the sea.

--

April, 2015

#

“(…) So swim away from the land and no sand. Just be a wild fish till the end. And throw out the lies, the but`s and denies, and never, never pretend.” - Astrid van der Veen