Catch of the Day
Lay me down, loose and lazy, lay me down upon this slab. Upon this butcher’s block, this pliant plank of ring and grain and knot. Position me with head due North, heart heavy in the cage, watch me, watch me, watch me! Lay me down.
Lay me down in your ship’s galley to be tabled in your mind. Thud of my thud, shimmering and glimmering in syncopated rhythm beside your favorite pots and pans. Swinging starboard, swinging port, swinging Land ho and I go.
Scaled beyond the swell, the churn, and the froth of feverish waves. On this boat. On this island. On this sea and in this world.
In the shiver of my timbers within the focus of your eye, diesel blood and fish-boned, all plasma bright and wish-boned, lay me down.
I have written you this poem.
I have composed for you this song.
Behold this 12 ft. swell.
Avast this tide of mine.
And I flop, and I land, and I am, and you will.
Now.
Strip from me all artifice. The wrinkles of my sweater, the slogans of my shirt, the bootlace of my shoes, and socks, and belt. My cloak and dagger and mask and cloth, all gone to bare, to true. Preserve me in the salt.
You.
Documentarian of my work, cartographer of my words, ink me in this vessel, upon this table, in this galley. Oh, fisher-you of my fisher-world, heavy trawler of my prose, spread my fins and fingers, my limbs and nails and nose. Pose me in my splash, my frolic, mid jump and pinned.
Mouth gawping, eyes unblinking—witness me!
Here is truth. The ink of it. In this impression there is no claim to be more than I am. To give more than I can provide. My size, my shape, the exact proportions of my worth absorbed hungrily in the pores of your rolling papers.
In this, the record will show the catch of the day, the one that didn’t get away. The one that did not shuck the line and run to deeper waters.
The print is the imprint and within the ink and doll-eyed void, my intent cannot be altered. My shape cannot be changed.
I am caught. Lay me down. Oh, sweet angler, my temporary wrangler, ink me now.
Ink me in this boat, in this wine-dark of the sea, with quilled stroke of speak-ink, yell-ink, do-tell and you-don’t say? ink. That ol’ cuttlefish talk-back black. Trace the fervor of my works. Seek the truths and messages and trapdoors of my form. Who am I? What do I say to thee?
Ink my lips and limbs and eyelids and the hard bones at my collar. Each line begins a sentence we will follow to the dark, laying down story and verse with each brush of your hand. The patchwork of my skin, the slugs of my scars, the loglines of these imperfections perfectly knuckled and scaled and rough at the edges.
Dab at me, at crevice and crag. Find hidden definitions, wrinkled and worn. The lies, the truths, the errant and the fleeting. Bristle to the brow, filling in my shape. Black it out. From the darkness becomes light—I am ready. In this void of light, I will bleed into the fabric, feeling the press of it as I stretch into the frame.
Stillness in the galley, breath held within this room, the paper floats down to press upon my story. In this moment, the impression is made. Transparent skin, it spreads and seeps into the fabric of your brain. Thin and delicate, I imprint upon your consciousness. Press left and right, stick and stuck. The print slots a memory bone into a new skeleton.
Will you be my Quint? My mighty mariner of memory? The keeper of my sea? We are both the tattooist and the tattooed. With firm pressure at the fingertips, tap this paper to crease and freckle, to bump and hairline. Remember me in this ink of time.
Hang me up to dry. Pin me to the peg. Paint in one eye, then two, and see what I’ve seen. Reveal the scale of my dreams. See them through me. See me through them.
Tell tales of me in darkened rooms as you sway and squint and still. I aim to be spoken of and spoken by, so speak of me, my Quint, as the creature and the creached* upon. As the work and the worker. As this, impressed upon your memory until eternity’s credits roll.
Entered in the log. Authenticated and authentic. Me or my work—remember me.
But the body laid down, what of the body once the impression is made?
Pick me up, throw me back, or eat me for your dinner. Do what you will—what you must. Spoiler alert, Quint got et. Consume me and I may consume you. We make meals of each other: Tis the glory of art.
And life, for that matter.
This is our existence as chum of the sea. As story bait for our shared histories. Our boats rock steady in the darkness of mysterious waters. Shooting stars above, unknown below. Is it danger? Is it glory? Is it a thing that will change you? Eat you? Reveal to you who you are, who you will become?
Am I the ocean? Am I the boat? Am I the shark or the sky?
Or am I just a fish? In your galley. On this slab. Waiting to make an impression.
Press firmly.
The shark is more than the fin above the water. Bring it to the surface and get the full picture, the imprint, the story.
The quiet town.
The still air.
The laying on the table.
Poor Quint, I’m sorry. Quint remembered those sharks in the theater of terror, as part of a horror that impressed upon him the screams of men, the bobbing corks of bodies, and the vivid blood of man.
Not all stories are pleasant stories, but it’s the witness that embeds the meaning. The one who sees who you are and absorbs what you seek to share. It is found in the logging of experience—the measuring the scale of, the shape of, the tone of.
We swim, we drown, we gasp for air. We rip each other to pieces in vast oceans. We search for schools in our shimmer and patrol. Yearn for the catch and release, knowing the release can be both actual and spiritual.
Catch me, ink me, throw me back, or devour.
We can only keep swimming as ourselves. As sharks or squid or crab or snapper. Hoping to be jagged and inked and hung on the wall of some chowder house in some seaside town, our shape outlined, our memory caught in a glimmer.
Our story told in the dark.
Remember me—my Quint, my memory sailor—as I come cruising by.
Your Gyotaku. Your fish print.
Hook. Line. Sinker.
Lay me down.
*Creached? Yes, I am aware that's not a word, but surely when a creature inflicts itself upon you, you are creached upon? I'm submitting it to the Oxford Dictionary people.
This week’s amends…
It's only fair that the words this week should be from the Quint monologue in JAWS. Recently, I saw JAWS was playing at the cinema near me for the 50th anniversary, so you bet yer arse I went. The only memory I had of watching this film as a teen was on a black and white television that was, at best a 13-inch-er. I think it might've actually been 11.
The 50th anniversary print was glorious. I wish I could go back to that cinema and see it again. There's a scene where it's night and the ocean is calm and you see the stars and the boat in the darkness and then... a shooting star darts across the sky. Didn't see that on my 11-inch screen. What an incredible film. I'm glad Bruce the shark was a disaster–barely seeing him the whole film is the best thing. Here's a story of restoring one of the remaining castings of Bruce.
Why animatronic Bruce was so Brucy.
And here is Quint's incredible monologue.
“Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was comin’ back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. Just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes.
“Didn’t see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that when you’re in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin’ from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn’t know, was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin’, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was kinda like old squares in the battle, like you see on a calendar, like the Battle of Waterloo, and the idea was the shark comes to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin’, hollerin’ and screamin’ and sometimes that shark he go away… sometimes he wouldn’t go away.
“Sometimes that shark he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark is he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be livin’… until he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then… ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’. The ocean turns red, in spite of all the poundin’ and the hollerin’ they all come in and… they rip you to pieces.
“You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don’t know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin’, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boatswain's mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up and down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he’d been bitten in half below the waist.
“Noon, the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and three hours later a big ol’ fat PBY come down and started to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, and the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945.
“Anyway, we delivered the bomb.”
On Rotation: “Weird Fishes” by some random guys.
The In Rainbows session is still one of my favorite "From the Basement" performances. In all its full and sonic glory, here
Here is a nice orchestral cover of Weird Fishes, which I've added to The Stream Covers playlist.
I could also have included the Primus fish chronicles... oh wait. I just did. Les Claypool sure does love fishin'!
A reminder that all songs featured in this newsletter over the years are added to the giant mega super playlist of magnificence which you can access with an effortless depress of this button. 👇
And a step by step
"What does it mean to live a finite, fragile life in an infinite, eternal universe?"
Shameless Podcast Plug
Listen to audio versions of early issues of The Stream on my podcast, Field of Streams, available on 👉 all major podcasting platforms 👈
Here’s Apple