Year of the Snake

Dream Carp

13 Dream Carp People traveled from miles away to see my paintings of fish— the jeweled armor of their scales, the beadlike set of their eyes in rubbery socket rings, the glimmering swish of fin and tail so real it seemed that you could almost dip a net deep into the paper and pull up the arching wet weight of a golden carp, a shiny trout, or the dark muscular heft of a bass with its mouth stretched into the surprised, wiry “oh” of a child’s wind sock. I captured my models from the sea, lake, and goldfish pond in the back garden, so careful not to let their mouths be torn by the hook, their scales chipped, or the silky tissue of their tails ripped by a clumsy hand. I kept them in large glass bowls, fed them mosquito wings or dry silkworm pupas offered from chopsticks, 14 and when I was finished making sketches, I quickly took them back and set them free again. Every night I dream I swim with these fish as a golden carp—black spots on cloisonné scales, pulled to the surface by the deceptive creamy luster of the moon or the sizzle of firefly lights across the water. And every night I am tempted once again by the smell of the baited hook, by my predictable hunger for earthly things, and each time I am surprised again by the stinging hook in my lip that pulls me mercilessly into the bright air, setting my gills on fire, the sharp, silver pain of the knife that slits me open so easily from tail to throat to reveal the scarlet elastic of my raw gills, the translucent film of my air sac, the milky rise of my stomach, and the gray marbled coil of my intestines. I rise 15 late each day, and work in brighter light. When I die, I will have my paintings brought down to the lake and slipped into the water. First the edges of ink will blur, and then there will be a great flurry as the fins, tails, and bodies begin blossoming into life again, each fish detaching from its canvas of silk or rice paper—a swirl of color, motion, swimming away. ...