The balcony of my room overlooks the ponds my plecos live in. I know they come out at night. I wonder if it is solace my fish find in the night; thus why they can emerge from their hiding places and go about the usual business of eating in order to live on another day and continue their survival.
I usually like the night too for the refuge it provides; like an old knowing tree with calm shade to cover me while I conduct extraordinary business dealing in feelings. For in this darkness, in the shadows, everything lengthens in different measures - hours, dreams, worries and longings.
I wonder then about the difference between a nocturnal fish or animal, and me. It seems that my usage of the night is conflicted. On the one hand, I would like to indulge in my emotional states. Cry as much as I want to, dream forever if I could, stay as transported as I can because the night is a highway. On the other hand, it is the best time to sleep (in my opinion). It's a natural physiological instinct (humans aren't supposed to be nocturnal; however we seem to break a lot of natural rules), but it also seems that to sleep while it's night gives me a double blanket to pull over me, to snuggle up in and rest as deep as I can. Thus I spend the most parts fighting a desire to sleep with the desire to traverse all the dimensions of wakefulness. In this sense, I equate wakefulness to space. Space in the sense of unboundedness resulting in part, the freedom to gaze at my belly which gives birth to the hope that I could discover my true heart. And then it springs the desire to gain some kind of clarity at the end of such a journey that only the night can take me on.
Therefore I guess I am not a nocturnal fish enjoying some sort of freeing when swimming out to the moonlight. I imagine that freedom in fish-swimming as it's a far more buoyant movement than the rather weighted, graceless ambulatory mode of humans. Pacing is not as elegant as cutting through water with a flick of a tail.
*Sidenote: One of my partner's bettas was just started on Melafix treatment for his tail rot today. He's a lot calmer now, and not zipping round frantically trying to nip himself from the itch as he was yesterday. Thank God!
MOTION BLUR!
Have I ever mentioned how difficult it is for me to just catch a glimpse of this pleco of mine? And he's very very in-tune to me. So much so that he knows exactly when to make a dash.
If you've never seen this fish move, you should. They may look like navy cruisers or other massive vehicles, but hell! when they whip that tail, it's 0-to-60 miles (distance) covered in a flash. Amazing propulsion.
*By the way, in case you didn't catch my play on words. This shot is unedited/untreated. It's literally a frozen-in-time moment, though it looks like time's too slow for my buddy.
You know the ones. They always warn you not to "kiss my ass or else..." or other comical-but-deadly threats in the event of tailgating.
Note: All my photos are taken on a Nikon Coolpix L11, one of those handy-dandy-not-so-fancy non-SLR digital cameras; hence, my frustrations at not being able to control focus etc. So as therapy, I treat my photos a little and when doing so, I usually re-name the files...
And when re-naming files, I took a look at this one and that song just popped in my head. Anyone remember a cartoon sometime during my childhood - titled "Sharky and George"? The theme song went something like this (fairly jazz-coolcat sounding)...
Sharky and GeorgeAnd I thought to re-name the file as "Duckweed and George" because pleco here looks fairly (cartoon-)sharklike and menacing. And then, since I'm still carrying around the intention to re-write the earlier Namely, Fish! post, it struck me like a thunder bolt of lightning, very very frightening, that
The crimebusters of the sea
For the month of July, PlecoFanatics' POTM's* subject is COMMONS! (Pterygoplichthys sp.) Hurrah! I get to participate for that's what my plecos are. And it's just poetry that the POTM is for July, my birthday month. What a wonderful present it would be to 'win' it (yes, I'm allowed to focus on me, me, me. I am first-day Leo after all).
So inspired by the desire, I went on a little 'fishing' expedition to capture my ever-elusive (or just plain psychic) non-albino 'common' pleco AND I GOT HIM!!! Coming up - photos and silly captions.
*photo-of-the-month friendly competition
I've joined the PlecoFanatics forums some time back. Going through the posts, I sometimes get really jealous when these pleco keepers lovingly call their plecos by name. I don't, can't and won't have names for my plecos which is contradicted by an illogical desire to name them because that would make it more 'personal'. And if I've deployed the notion of "maternal sentiments" (please look up), what kind of mother am I if I don't have names for my two babies? Do I slip down the Cancer-ous side of my astrological makeup and worry myself silly that I am unable to have names for them? I can't EVEN begin to imagine what names to call them. How am I suppose to practise motherhood when I can't even take a name to corrupt by cooing and truncating it and therefore make strange unintelligble sounds that's supposed to translate as love for my plecos?
But it's a known issue with me. I have had feline friends (MANY!) and after a while, I can't name any of them. So the motivational message through all this is: Don't name your pets or animals that you care for. Why? And how then do you communicate to your pets/animals? Will you just rudely shout "Oy" or "Hey you"? I can't answer these questions for you. After all, this is my particular neurosis. Not yours.
I just think like this...
1. Do animals really understand human speech and language? They may figure out that a certain sound is associated with our intention to draw their attention. The usual tactic is that the animal is rewarded with food. But Pavlovian association doesn't necessarily mean understanding speech and language as we've created it. Therefore, what's the purpose in inflicting anthropocentric names upon these animals we care for? You think they care? They're probably making snide mental remarks each time they hear strange sounds coming out of our mouths. It's wrong on an animals' rights count. (Yah, I know, I'm heading towards a problematic territory, because why am I even keeping fish out of their natural environment?)
2. I am unimaginative in this aspect. What names could really suit fish or cat? This or that?
3. In spite of having no name to corrupt (say, Elizabeth to Lizzy, Lizbabe, Lil' Liz...you get my drift), I can still make unintelligble sounds and coo just as effectively and nonsensically to my fish, which satisfies my bullying human ways.
Names are just for us. Naming is a fascination.*
*More notes to come later.
I enjoy a-maize-ing moments and steamrolling-out hackneyed phrases. I suggest you swallow or spit.
I had an aesthetically pleasing day-start
For my two sailfin plecos made art
After a little spat between my fish and me over Marrows and the Not-Sucking-Of*, I resumed feeding them zucchinis. It's been shared by plee-koh-keepers that plecos will differ in zucchini-part preference - some eat the rind only, some eat the skin only, some eat every part. So I share with you that mine are strictly Rind-Only eaters.
Back to the morning: I traipsed down to the pond/tank/pond (look, it defies definition...) to check on the zucchinis. Background: Plecos are nocturnal feeders plus I have the additional aggravation from the has-to-be-deliberate hiding my fish do, to my seeking. And lo-and-behold! A work of art, the most perfectly sculpted zucchini ever!
Typically, the evidence that my plecos have eaten reminds me of tire tracks - Corvettes on Cougettes. Burnt rubber, baby! Today, it's bee-yoo-tee-foooool hemispherical harmony, a crater of perfectly rounded symmetry. How did my babies know that Art is my job and hence, my Life?
And in case, you can't suss my curatorial framework - the 'visual narrative' is from colour to black-and-white to highlight the formal aesthetics, and from the big picture to the fine detail.
*From Internet-mining of what-to-feed-plecos information, the list included zucchinis and cucumbers. Neither of which were in stock on that fateful day and there were instead marrows. I figured it's part of the same happy veggie family, so P1 and P2 should love these marrows and eat the damn marrows. INSTEAD, despite pleas and cajolings, the feeding spot was vacated as farts leave the body.
I make no excuses. Logic gates are not functioning - no ANDs or ORs, NANDs or NORs - so we have this mess of input, throughput and output; this all-in-one enregistrement in that DeleuzeGillian sense of my fishy encounters. Thus created is the licence for me to go on and from nowhere towards nothing, with idiosyncratic hyperlinking. My assumption, dear Reader, is that we are so used and immersed in the hyperlinking, Google-searching condition that you would be un-lazy enough to go find out about the fish I refer to, or other obscure references. That would, in turn, privilege me to be the lazy one such that I would not need to strive to maintain accurate description of fish or have to explicate profusely. Don't take it personal, I just take this blog as a pet (haw-haw) project.
I have only two fish. For now. I have to be responsible, despite my already-given karmic transgression in keeping them. I tend to like 'ugly' fish (I prefer the term, "lookers") which tend to have maximum length on the maximal end of tropical fish size scale. Therefore, until I have settled where I'm actually going to stay put, at least for the next few years which in turn, would permit me to have proper tank setups that will be stable [The U-Boat Project or Unrocked Boats], I will care only for my plecos (these South American sometimes-armour-plated suckermouth catfish/the Locariidae family of the Siluriformes) and counterBorg the desire to assimilate more fish into my life.
It is better to specialise, since 'generalisation', in general, is often perceived as bad form and intellectually unsound. So I will focus on liking ugly big fish. Specifically catfish, but more broadly, The Oddballs (in aquarist-speak).
Here's my desirable-fish list as of this moment, not ordered in any way including classification:
1. Plecos, plecos, plecos (specifically from Pterygoplichthys and Panaque genera)
2. Asian catfish families (especially, the Bagridae and Pangasidae family)
3. Lophiosilurus alexandri
4. Wolf fish (and I mean the freshwater kind, Hoplias malabaricus)
5. Ikan betuk, what the Malays call the climbing perch (Anabas testudineus)
6. Polypteridae family (specifically Polypterus delhezi and the related Erpetoichthys calabricus)
7. Elephant nose fish, specifically Gnathonemus petersii
8. Black ghost knifefish (Apteronotus albifrons)
9. Fire eel (Mastacembelus erythrotaenia)
