AQUARIUM

AQUARIUM
April 23, 1993 – 1:30 p.m.

There is a promise of a brighter night. The power interruption starts this early and I hope that light will resume early too.

While waiting for a patient at our screened Lanai I chanced to look at Bel’s hexagonal aquarium. I watched the fishes swimming their ways through the water. These fishes are all very lucky. They are living in a carefully controlled environment supposedly clean and non-polluted. Although I wonder how they can live happily with the new environment. Of course there are scavenger fishes like the cat fishes and others doing the cleaning activities. With each other, they are creating a kind of balance that interacts with the plants, the “bubblers”, the filters and the balanced food that are fed to them on time.

If one can only be a fish even temporarily just to avoid the heat of summer perhaps everyone would like to experience life inside the aquarium. Or maybe if fishes could think, they are enjoying watching men who are out side their water medium even if men are perspiring uncomfortably.

It is probably not perfectly satisfactory. Everyone must be elevated to a higher dimension of existence and to attain that, death is necessary.

I think blackout and fishes are bringing me further away but I feel good that I can still think, that I can still analyze because that shows I am still very much part of this world.

One other thing that I learned from this blackout experience is the virtue of patience. As I am getting used to blackout I can feel that I am getting more patient not only about darkness but also about trials of daily existence. I am even patient about callers that don’t talk when I lift the phone.

Waiting for blackout is also becoming everybody’s habit. People get used to expecting a blackout so much that one night so many were “disappointed” when the awaited blackout didn’t come the whole night. I am afraid time will come we’ll crave for it.