asakiyume | Entries tagged with fish

sovay linked me to a story from 2012, "Aquatica," by MC Clark, in which a male anglerfish's effort to avoid his own biological drive and the blandishments of a female anglerfish lead to profound conversations. Really gripping story that creates a full, meaningful vision of the anglerfish life cycle--which is one of those life cycles that seems really alien from a mammalian point of view. It's easy to sympathize with the male anglerfish's desire to outrun biological determinism, but it's not merely survival he's after--as the female anglerfish points out, death comes either way--it's wanting to perceive or understand something more than just the cycle.

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On the way to visit my dad on Christmas Day a small murmuration passed over our car. It was breathtaking--thinking about it makes me stop breathing. Dark bodies, wings, pale sky--a tessellating collectivity. Then on our way back later in the day, we saw bobcats in a meadow. Bobcats are so strange, if you're used to domestic cats: they're like someone has taken a domestic cat and given it extra-strong, extra muscular legs... and reduced its tail.

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Saw this and wasn't sure at first whether it was a branch on the path or the shadow of a branch.

(It was a shadow)

Current Music: Biomigrant & El Monte Adentro: Las Olas del Mar

On the first day we spent together, my friend took me down to the edge of Yahuarcaca. That name goes with a group of lakes connected to the Amazon, los lagos Yahuarcaca, but she calls it/them río--Río Yahuarcaca. Like the main river, it inhales and exhales. The waters are at their highest in April or so, and then begin to recede. In June (when I was there this time) they're not at their lowest, but they've receded a good bit. So as you walk beside the water, you're walking in places where you'd be swimming at other times of year. You'd be waaaay under water in April, but in June you're on (more or less) solid ground, breathing air. The same trees that feed the terrestrial creatures drop fruit into the water to feed the water creatures at other times of year. They're watching over and providing for everyone.

"When the forest is flooded, this is a nursery for fish," my friend told me.

Wouldn't you feel safe there? A good place to grow big. It was the fishes' turn to be in this space a few months ago, but at that moment it was our turn. We're sharing the space, just time-slipped. Water creatures were swimming by and over me--time-slipped.

Trees must grow very wise indeed, presiding over two worlds like this. Think of the tales they can tell of all the creatures they watch over.

Genipa americana, known as huito in Spanish, é in Tikuna, is a very wise and generous tree. Francy told me it's a great-great-great grandparent of the Ticuna people.** So when she and her brother took me to meet a huito tree, I felt really lucky to meet it.

Its fruit is edible when ripe, and when unripe, it makes a blue-black protective dye (as described in this entry). In the blink of an eye, my friend's brother was up in the tree. He tossed down a couple of unripe fruits so we could grate them and make some dye back at their house.

**Online I found the story of this written out: Yoi and Ipi, two brothers, came to Earth when it was completely dark: they cut down the giant ceiba that was obscuring the sun, and all manner of plants and animals then were able to flourish. Yoi, the older brother, gave Ipi, the younger brother, the task of growing huito and then grating the fruits. Some of the gratings fell into the water and became fish, which later Yoi caught. The fish he caught became the Tikuna people.

Current Music: Biomigrant & Plu con Pla: Cuervos

In Aventura en el Amazonas both Mayam and Nashi are learning about the chain of life--Mayam when her mother talks to her about piranhas and other carnivorous fish, and Nashi when he sees a cayman gobble up a roseate spoonbill.

"Some fish feed on others," their mother tells Mayam, who is feeling like it would be good to get rid of some of the more marauding of the the carnivorous fish. "It's like a staircase: if you take away one step, all of it comes crashing down."

And

"Nature knows how to do its thing, even if at first we don't understand" says their father to Nashi.

I didn't see a roseate spoonbill, but I did see a harpy eagle, with its fierce, strange face. (The one I saw looked like the one on the right--photo from the Miami zoo's Harpy Eagle Project)

And I didn't fish for piranhas, but I had some kind of carnivorous fish one meal--and I saw a truly gigantic fish in the market. (It's a bit daunting--it's behind a cut)

( big fish )

Yesterday I took Little Springtime and her fiancée to see my father, and during the drive, I passed a truck with a message on the back of its trailer: "Don't like trucks? Buy less stuff!"

Very strange! The driver feels upset about other drivers, presumably car drivers, not "liking" trucks? But the driver is in a great huge 18-wheeler--why should they fuss about the opinions of car drivers? How can it possibly affect them? (Where are they hearing all this negativity?) I'm pretty neutral on trucks, but my impression is that people who feel negatively about them are mainly expressing nervousness about driving near them--or are complaining about bad driving on the part of the trucks--not, y'know, saying trucks are evil or that trucks should disappear, which is kind of what the driver's message seemed to imply.

"Buy less stuff" is disingenuous when all sorts of necessities travel by truck, but okay, let's say people could truly buy less stuff ... then the driver of the truck might lose their job? So on that level too the message was a head scratcher.

This week just past, the week between the two semesters of my jail job, we visited the Robert E. Barrett fishway again, to show the healing angel the fish elevator, and this year there was a marvelous docent there, Walter, a retired professor who grew up around here and leapt and jumped his way from rock to rock across the shallows below the dam when he was young.

He told the story of fishing for a lemon shark when he was a young man--he had wanted the jaw of the shark as a souvenir. But when he did finally catch a lemon shark, it was so beautiful that he was ashamed of having wanted to display its jaw, and he let it go. Then, some years later, he was snorkeling in the Caribbean, swimming near a pod of dolphins who suddenly took off when he got near. He returned to the boat only to be told that a giant shark had been dogging him--but not attacking him, he felt, because he had let the lemon shark go.

He loves fish, you could tell. It was mainly lampreys and shad being transported in the elevator that day (see murky pictures below), and he had a phone video of a lamprey that attached itself hopefully to the glass wall of the elevator, revealing its terrifying mouth--like the sandworm mouth on some paperback editions of Dune.

I was happy to meet and talk with him.

lampreys

shad

Crossposts: https://asakiyume.livejournal.com/926167.html

When I was telling my father about the fish elevator and all those shad, he told me ~~that he'd learned from a friend that mountain laurel, which blooms around now, is known as "the shad tree"--because when it blooms, that's when the shad run.~~

He just called to tell me I'd misunderstood: It's not that mountain laurel are called shad tree, but that there's another tree, that blooms at the same time as mountain laurel, called shad tree. Actually, several trees in the genus Amelanchier go by that name, including this, Amelanchier bartramaiana, the mountain shadbush (also known as oblong serviceberry--ahh, names):

(Source)

(Here's a photo from Flickr of mountain laurel--not a shad tree or shadbush--by Flickr user Robert Ferraro--you can click through to see it larger.)

He also told me that there was a law in Boston in the 18th century that you couldn't feed apprentices shad more than twice a week... which gives you a sense of its plentifulness at that time (and its low regard). (I searched law+apprentices+shad and found confirmation in a Google books excerpt from The Literary Era: A Repository of Literary and Miscellaneous Information (published 1901), which says,

From a recently published report of the Pennsylvania Fish Commission, it would appear that similar troubles were not unknown in eighteenth-century Philadelphia. The low prices of fish tempted many master mechanics to keep their apprentices on a lenten diet. Shad were particularly common and particularly cheap--so common and so cheap, in fact, that they were considered fit only for Indians, helots, and apprentices. The apprentices revolted ... The youngsters ... triumphed so far that the law relating to indentures was changed so that the boys "were not to be fed on fish more than twice a week." (p. 298)

Crossposts: http://asakiyume.livejournal.com/863797.html

Behold the powerful falls at the Holyoke dam. Holyoke Gas and Electric generates power here.

Watch on YouTube

This dam is a barrier to fish that need to get upstream to spawn. There have been various means of solving this problem, but at present it's a literal elevator, a huge mechanism powered by giant turbines and with great chains that lift boxes of water, packed with fish, up above the falls. Yesterday Wakanomori and I went to see it--a marvelous experience!

It has very cute signposts:

In the informational room, there's a diagram that shows how the elevator works. You can see the giant turbines:

And a tally of how many fish have been lifted: yesterday was a record for American shad. (In the colonial days, they used to say that when the shad were running, you could walk across the Connecticut river on their backs.)

( photos and videos of fish, people watching fish, people fishing, and massive machinery )

Crossposts: http://asakiyume.livejournal.com/863537.html

I am having trouble posting--not technical trouble; inside-my-head trouble. Nothing is in my Goldilocks zone. It's either too one-thing or too another-thing. WELL GOLDILOCKS, I'M ALL OUT OF LUKEWARM PORRIDGE SO YOU'LL JUST HAVE TO ACCEPT THIS.

Sound One is the dawn chorus of fishes, which

ann_leckie reblogged on Tumblr. How about that! Fishes sing to greet the day, just like birds. I am sure there are places where people set out in boats before dawn to hear those songs.

Sound Two is the woodcock. He's doing his mating call (peeent, peeent) and his mating dance (a twittering, spiraling flight up into the air) already, earliest I've ever noticed. One of my favorite memories is going out with the healing angel to witness the dance. The woodcock is such a sweet, shy, dorky-looking bird; I'm glad his mating ritual is such a grand display.

The thought has to do with law-breaking and hypocrisy. I wrote a whole entry on this and then deleted it. Here's the executive summary: There is not a driver I know (including myself) who doesn't sometimes drive faster than the speed limit. This is, however, a crime. People's excuses for their behavior fall into the everybody-does-it category, the the-posted-speed-in-this-area-is-ridiculous category, and the I-normally-don't-but-today-I-was-late/it-was-urgent category. Whatever. The point is, people are willing to break that law for, essentially, no good reason whatsoever. It's not like exceeding the speed limit offers the possibility of freedom from a life of hardship and deprivation. Nope. People just... do it. And yet speeding--especially if you go considerably above the speed limit (which, admittedly, not everyone who speeds does) makes you an actual threat to people--like, your likelihood of killing someone goes up. You know what doesn't increase your likelihood of killing someone? Crossing a border without papers in hopes of gaining work. So. No one who speeds should ever use "but they're breaking the law" as a way to condemn undocumented immigrants.

How's that for mood shift! Goldilocks has her head in her hands. Sorry, kid.

Current Music: Los Rakas: Lluvia

There's a weathervane perched on the tip of the steeple of the Congregational Church in town--I thought at first it was a skeletal fish, but maybe it's just a decorative arrow.... but maybe it is a fish, swimming in the sky ocean.

The birds are not sea birds. Maybe they perch on the fish-arrow the way savannah birds perch on elephants. Maybe they just like the view. So high. Now that I know they cluster there, I look for them every time I pass the church.

And here's a photo of a reflection of the setting sun. It's actually a reflection of a reflection. If you look at this blog post through a mirror, you'll have added some extra layers.

I had some actual words-y content-y sorts of things to share, but pictures are good too. The other stuff comes and goes, and there's always something new. Oh, hey, but one other thing: at the laundromat the other day, I saw a woman, helped by her little son, empty the dollar changer of dollars and put in a whole tubful of quarters--presumably ones taken out of the washers and driers. What a happy closed system. There was a dollar jammed up, which they couldn't get out, and the mom said, "leave it for the spirits of the change machine." A cool thing for her to say. The boy was bumming about it, a little, but a torn dollar bill is no good, in any case.

Phone photos

Current Music: Popskyy: Ballad

Why do you hurl yourself ashore,
star charts etched in your skin
for us to use as augury?
Why sacrifice yourself
for aliens so barely literate
in the symbols you employ?