A Flounder in a Sea of Mackerel
After my second year of high school, I decided to send myself to boarding school. My first year there, I lived with a boy from California named Blake. He was kind hearted, and a pure soul. He was never tainted by the common teenage temptations (drugs, sex, alcohol, mischievous behavior, etc). He was not only kind and innocent, but also strong and solid. One night at four in the morning, he fell out of bed. When his body hit the floor, my unconscious mind told me that the floor was falling through and the building was collapsing. Once I regained consciousness and my fear of both myself and Blake dying had subsided, I tried to wake Blake up, but to no avail. He was a sound sleeper. I was just about ready to go back to bed, and let him sleep the night on the floor, when he started flailing. He was having a seizure. My half asleep brain didn't know what to think, I was afraid, what was going to happen? I got help. Seven men holding him down and enough morphine to sedate a small elephant later, he was calm enough to go in an ambulance peacefully. The next year he stayed home with his family instead of returning to school. We were told that halfway through the year he had passed away.
I was devastated. It was the first time someone close to me had passed away and I was scared, sad, and hurt. I didn't know what or how to feel. Mark Doty writes in "Souls on Ice" about how his world was turned upside down by the loss of someone close to him. The thoughts of the deceased bled into his writing, feelings, and overall thought pattern. Beginning with a mackerel in a supermarket, Doty begins to explore death in the physical universe, the universe which holds our bodies, not our minds. To him, the mackerel signifies human similarity and how we are all essentially the same piece of fish laying next to one another once we are deceased. Through the process of poetic writing, he realizes that a person may "lose oneself 'entirely in the universe / of shimmer'" Doty is telling us that there is no 'self' because "that self would be lost" Instead, we are all just a part of the entirely iridescent universe, where everyone shines in their own way that their individuality is lost in a world where everyone is trying to be unique they actually become similar. As Doty states, everyone is a part of the giant iridescent soap bubble which is the physical universe, but we are not unique, we all shine equally to the point where only a shimmer of humanity is seen from afar, not individuals. To Doty, every person is a mackerel in the sea. He believes that when the 'individual' expires, his true meaning is revealed. He is just another fish in the sea. To Doty, there are no flounder or rainbow fish, nothing unique or special in anyway, just the mackerel.
This might make sense if you were in space looking down, but I was not looking down upon my boarding school when Blake died. Instead, someone I spent eight months living ten feet from, someone I knew more than most, ceased to exist. Doty believes that our physical universe shimmers when all of the unique people who 'shine' are put next to one another when you look from afar, but I was not far away. I was there, in the middle of it all. There was only me, and the feeling of loss. This feeling is stronger than the forces of the physical universe. The physical universe is broad and large. This feeling of loss is tight and personal. It pulls you out of the realm of the universe and into the world of yourself. Here, the universe changes from a physical entity which contains stars, black holes and planets, to the universe within. This universe holds your feelings and your thoughts and is concealed from all except yourself.
Doty has lost someone close to him, and eventually he comes to the realization that he is one of the world's nearly seven billion people. He is just another fish in the sea, an iridescent mackerel in a school of mackerel equally as bright. To me, Blake was no mackerel. He was not the same as the next person, I cannot interact with him anymore like I can the person beside me. He is gone, and he will be remembered as something more than just another person. To me, he is not just another fish in the sea, he is a unique fish, something special and beautiful. In Scott Momaday essay, "The Way to Rainy Mountain," he writes about how he coped with the loss of his grandmother. He did this by following a path which reminded him of his grandmother. The distinctive memories he had is why he mourns and remembers her. He wrote: "Now that I can have her only in memory, I see my grandmother in several postures that were peculiar to her..." He not only writes about how his Grandmother was special and different, he writes about how he remembers her. This is unique to him, and only him. He cannot compare her to another person because the memories which he has of her and the 'peculiar' things which fueled these memories are something that not many would understand. The memories of his grandmother turning meat in an iron skillet, or kneeling at the side of her bed half nude praying in her native tongue made her special to him in a way that only he could decipher. The strength of these memories shine brighter than anything else in his universe, it is the memories which he holds on to which makes his grandmother unique.
Doty says the universe is too iridescent for one to shine through while Momaday says the strength of memories creates your own universe where there is only the self and what shines through in your universe depends on the strength of your memories. There are no mackerel in your own sea, each person is an individual.
In my late elementary-school years, my grandfather passed away. I knew him, and I had seen him a handful of times. He was blood, he was family, and yet, I was not devastated. I was sad, but I wasn't heartbroken. Yes, I did lose the only grandfather I knew, but it seemed as if life would go on. According to Momaday, this shouldn't be. I should be sad, the memory of fishing off the pier in long island should reside within me and I shouldn't feel like, 'it's a shame he died, but people die every day... sad, but true.' But this is how I felt when he died. For a while I was afraid that I had built up a wall too strong that nothing would be able to penetrate it. I was scared that I had built a barrier so high that I just had no feeling inside. I was afraid of who I would become if I started to feel like this all the time. I was scared of the person I was becoming if that person couldn't mourn a dead family member.
Neither Doty nor Momaday helps me to understand this feeling of a lack of sorrow. I have had experiences go both ways, according to them. I have been hurt, but I have also dealt with a death where I felt it was part of the cycle of life and everything would be fine. Can you get hurt by one persons death, but also be unaffected by another's? In Jim W. Corder essay "Aching for a Self" he writes: "We decide against the individual. Where the soul is noticeable or insistent, we proclaim that 'radical individualism' is at work and expect the troublesome soul to subside or to evolve." Corder is telling us that in order for someone to be unique and remembered, they need to act that way. That persons soul will either subside, fall into the lustrous glow which Doty calls the physical universe, or it will evolve into a memory and become something Momaday experienced with the loss of his grandmother. Doty may have been in love, but did the person he was in love with make him need to be remembered or hurt by his death?
Perhaps it's that in order for someone to dwell inside your heart and your memories after they have died, they must have been forced upon you, you must not be able to forget about how they were separate from everyone else, and you could never say they were just another fish in the sea. It seems as if some people feel no matter how hard they try, they will never shine brighter or be as memorable as the person next to them so they don't even try. These people become the fish in the sea which Doty spoke of. However, if someone lives within their own universe and doesn't worry about anyone else, maybe they are the ones which are remembered such as Momaday's grandmother. She had forced herself to be remembered because of the peculiar things she had done while living, which might be why Momaday will hold on to her as a unique individual, not just another person.
However, maybe some people just can't force themselves to be remembered by others. I wonder if Doty's partner, who may have been a great person, may not have forced himself into Doty's memory as being a unique and striking individual. There may have been many reasons for this, but some people may just be afraid of being different, of standing out. Some people may be content with fitting in because they are afraid of what else might happen. How can they be different? How is it possible for them to truly be one out of seven billion? These notions make me fearful of how I will be remembered once I pass on. Will I be one of those fish? Or one of those unique memories? As Corder puts it, "I still sometimes think that I am real, but my existence is in doubt." Doty has lead me to question my own existence. Am I afraid of reality? Of close ones dying like Blake did? The physical universe is big, and some may fear what they can't wrap around their mind, which may be why they cannot force themselves into people's memories. However, some understand that the universe isn't a scary place when you fabricate your own through memory, feeling, desire, they are all ways to un-complicate this universe and grasp it to make it our own. This is the transformation from the physical to the internal universe. We don't need to fear something large, we just need to cut it down to size and make it easier for us to deal with.
Maybe Doty was right, there are too many fish in the sea, but that is why we swim in schools rather than as a whole. Each person shines for what they represent, who they are, and how they fit with you. However, in order to be missed, they need to make themselves want to be missed. I am not belittling Doty's feelings for his lost partner, any loss is hard. I am merely hypothesizing the fact that maybe he didn't force Doty to miss him more than someone would miss a lover. As Corder said "we wait for the soul to subside or to evolve" and it seems as if Doty's partner's soul failed to evolve. For some, the universe is too big for their soul to lighten up more than others in the physical universe. However, for those who have been missed, it was a walk in the park. We may be fearful of being a part of the iridescent human rainbow in the physical universe, but the memories of loved ones which we are forced to hold dear, keep us strong and focused on what really matters, our own universe.
