Writing a Drawing of a Fish
I don’t want to write today. I want to draw a drawing of a fish, in the style of Paul Klee. The fish resembles something deep inside of me, that wants to come out. I want to be seen, but I don’t want to be dramatic about it. I want there to be a drawing of this fish, so that there is this avatar of what’s inside me. I want to not have to try to be seen today, because everybody will see me, and they will see the fish, and they will understand.
Paul Klee did draw a fish. In 1925, Fish Magic.
I want my drawing of a fish to be just like this. I want it to be Paul Klee’s drawing of fish, but for it to have come from inside myself. I want to make this exact painting.
When I look at it again, I think I don’t know what the symbols mean. I don’t know why there are flowers in this painting. I do not know why it is this number of fish. I do not know why there is a clock, or a comet. I do not know why the alien has two faces.
I have not looked at these details at all, when I thought to myself that I want to make this exact painting. The more I look at these details, the less the painting feels like how it felt before, when it felt like it could be totally mine, totally from inside myself.
When I look back again, and look at the orange speckles of light seeming to illuminate the painting, I feel like the painting is mine again. It feels more like mine again, and also more like everyone’s, versus from deep inside myself. More like sunshine from above, than deep in the ocean.
I would not be surprised if the different feelings coming from all these different elements if one focuses on different ones, is some of the genius of this painting. Fish magic indeed.
I don’t know who I feel embattled by, or which of people’s battles I am currently taking on, that I do not feel like I understand. I do not know what I end up getting involved with when I want to help a friend world-build. I have never had a case where I thought it was not worthwhile, but I have had many cases where it has left me feeling illegible. Like there is an outside me, and a deep fish inside myself, and that the talking that the outside me is doing is different from what the deep fish wants to say.
Over time, I do not abandon the deep fish. I just get more and more illegible, as I point to things, or try to circle around things, to get people to see the deep fish. But I have not known how to have people see it. The circulation does not work a lot of the time.
Maybe the desire to make the Klee painting, the fish, in some kind of social world, hit by the sun, illuminated, seen, is as straightforward as metaphors get.