Jesus was a fisherman, too.
Dear Reader,
This is a memory. This is my memory. But it was so sublime that I think it gets to the root of our common mystery.
Four in the morning, my brother Jack was shaking me awake.“Xavier wake up!!! The starry floor and the watery shore, is given thee till the break of day!” His words pulled my eyes open. I’d gone to sleep in my clothes a few hours before. I rose, kissed Iris three times; one kiss for each eyelid, one for her lips. I followed Jack outside the house and down the stone path to the street. I shivered violently as I closed the front door, unprepared for the early morning cold in August. The sky was black as ink as I watched my brother Mark and Jack’s two friends, Jim and Rob, loading up the car. We were staying at a house by the ocean, which our family had rented in Avalon.
My brother Mark packed a cooler into the back of his car, which was howling Hendrix’s voodoo child. Mark wore cut off shorts, a white t-shirt with the outline of a Great White’s jaw draw on it, and dark sunglasses. He was the expert fisherman in the family. Fishing ran in his blood and he’d been going out since he could hold a rod. The rest of us just followed him along to be near the adventure. Last night he’d informed us of the mission: go out to the start of the canyon. The canyon began thirty three miles off the coast of Avalon and extended over the Atlantic coast shelf. It was mid-August and the tuna were running. We piled into the car and drove the five minutes to the dock.
The dock creaked in the moonlight as we quietly loaded the rods, bait, a red igloo cooler filled with ice, water and beer. Next we checked to see if everything was ready on the boat. Mark walked around the 32 foot whaler with an American spirit cigarette dangling from his lips and a mad genius glow in his eyes. I followed him as he inspected all of our gear. “Are you ready little brother? Young scum! Where’s the gaff?”
I pointed to the sharp, three foot long metal hook stowed by the steering wheel of the boat. “Good. Where’s the net?” Thus went the next twenty minutes of preparation, which were really just quick crash test in identification of the important tools and weapons on board, until finally Mark slapped me on the back and said,
“Ok. We’re going to the edge, are you sure you’re ready?”
I nodded vigorously and tried to say “Yes”. Only I was so cold, I couldn’t get a word out because my teeth were chattering. I’d forgotten any sneakers and pants and the soles of my feet felt like slabs of ice. Jack gave me his sneakers and sweatpants. Mark tested the engines. Jim and Rob got onboard. Jack and I cast off the ropes and Mark headed the boat out of the bay.
The water shone like black obsidian and the full moon hung overhead. Mark grabbed me by the shoulder and said, “here’s your take!” He handed me a small chocolate square and a beer. “When are we going out?” No sooner had the words left my mouth then he had raised his left hand to his lips and tossed his chocolate back. A wide grin formed on his face and he just smiled. I looked and my hands then did the same and drank some beer. “Have no fear little buddy, we’re going fishing!” I laughed despite the cold and leaned against the white counter which served as a seat behind the steering wheel. “When’s the sun coming up? I asked. Mark laughed, “soon, very soon.” I turned to say something to Jack but he was talking and drinking with Jim and Rob.
As we moved through the bay, I watched the herons hunting in the marshes. They’d stand perfectly still, their long,reed-like legs just barely visible above the water. Then they’d strike and pull wiggling minnows from the shallows. We saw two ospreys circling the bridge which marked the channel. When we came to the 21st street bridge, the doorway to the channel, I reminded Mark of the story about our littlest brother Tyler. Last week he’d been drinking at a party with his friends and on a dare he jumped off the bridge with his best friend’s girlfriend. We laughed at the thought and looked up at the concrete supports as we passed underneath. It was seventy feet at the highest part. Mark revved the engine and I held on while the boat shot forward like a c hampaign cork on new years’ eve.
In the channel the water moved in two to three foot waves. For the next hour and a half we were driving out. Mark drove at top speed the entire way, and the boat would leap from one wave crest to the next. The sun began to rise slowly, and it was as though it were the first time it had ever risen. Right before sunrise, the water had been a dark bluish black. But slowly the burning orange sphere on the horizon rose up into the sky. As it bloomed in front of us it seemed to be breathing fire into the waters. I gradually became lost in the violent yet rhythmic rise and fall of the boat until I was almost hypnotized. When suddenly Mark pointed directly at the Sun and started screaming, ” We’re riding the solar road now, boys! Ain’t no turning back. Heaven open up your gates!” Ah- Ha-yea!” At these benediction, my heart seemed to rise up in my chest, almost as though it were a bird flapping its wings wildly trying to fly out of my body. As Mark continued to drive us out, he pushed the boat at such a speed it hurled itself from wave crest to wave crest and shuttered violently every time it landed. We quickly lost sight of land and it was a long, bone-rattling trek before Mark decided we’d gone far enough and stopped the boat. He threw the engines down until we were idling. The golden orb of the sun had risen midway up in the sky over the horizon. I stared dumbstruck at it, seeing concentric circle radiating from its center across the pale robin’s eggshell blue of the sky.
Mark shouted at me, “Xavier, we’re going to start trolling so quick grab the wheel. Jack and I are going to put out the lines.” I switched in behind the wheel, while he and Jack gathered the four casting rods, set up the tackle on them, and then cast out into the
ocean. The idea behind trolling is that you use the boat’s motion to keep the bait moving fast. We were looking to catch the Great “Thunnas Thynnus”, the aquatic Billy-goat king himself, the Northern BlueFinTuna, and they typically travel at great speed. Once the lines were out Mark took control of the wheel again.
We trolled for an hour with the sun growing steadily stronger. Everything developed a subtle ebb and flow. I sat in the middle of the boat and looked down at the constant swell of sea water and then up into the supreme stillness of the sky. It felt like a weird and wonderful mirror of existence. Our fishing lines cut through the water and the five of us waited.
Then suddenly, Rob called out from the back of the boat, “Holy F#c$! There’s a green refrigerator!” I had been staring fixedly and peacefully at the water directly before me. It appeared to me as something from a play on a stage somewhere. For the water didn’t look like water so much as two emerald sheets rippling back and forth in opposite directions to each other. One sheet was in my foreground and the other was closer to the horizon. And the sun shone down like a giant, crimson, burning eye. Suddenly Rob’s voice jerked me back onto the boat. Did he say a green refrigerator? We all went to the back where he was and gazed down into the water. The object was not a refrigerator at all but actually a sea-turtle. It was a vivid, deep-green with paler trapezoids running along its outer shell. We watched it swim by in silence. Then went back to the front of the boat.
My brothers and I sat in the front staring out at the waves. We talked and drank and smoked. We talked about everything under the sun and soon came to talking about fishing with our grandfather. How he was a true pro because he’d always smile at the prospect of fishing. Soon into the conversation, everything really started to kick in. I felt dehydrated and sky-sick so I went and laid down in the foremost part of the boat. I saw Iris’ face in the center of the pale, fading moon and I watched her sleeping. It reminded me of the Teletubbies show I’d seen with my niece Alice, where there is a baby’s face superimposed upon the sun.
As I lay there in the front of the boat, I stared up at the last few rapidly disappearing stars. They’d wink out of sight one by one as the day gained strength. Jack clamped a pair of UV sunglasses on me and solemnly told me not to do anything stupid like stare at the sun.
I lay there and watched the clouds. They were cirrus clouds, floating high up in the atmosphere. As I watched them, I began to see angels flying between one cloud and another. I felt as though I too were flying. Flying over mountaintops, like I was strapped to the bottom of a jet plane, and I’d completely forgotten that I was on a boat 33 miles out in the Atlantic. I sat up and became completely disoriented. Turning my head from side to side, I saw only water and sky as far as I could see. And the water at the horizon shimmered fantastically. The angle of the light was more acute and direct at the horizon so the water served as a perfect mirror for the sun. It was so luminous that I couldn’t tell where the sea started and the sky ended. The light at the horizon felt to be so pure and intense some of itself seemed hidden from my eyes. Hidden in the deep. I suddenly recalled the definition of “Deep: extending far inward or beneath the surface”.
I felt like heaven was all around us at the horizon, but I could only realize that it was heaven by imagining heaven as someplace else. Someplace yet to be. And just then I began to hear an expression reverberating in my head:
The Depth of Light is Time; Time is the Depth of Light…..The Depth of Light is Time; Time is the Depth of Light……… The Depth of Light is Time; Time is the Depth of Light.”
I stared wide eyed around me. Everywhere was only water and sky, sky and water.
Every direction seemed to be the same. The uniformity of past and present, present and future seemed to eliminate the very concept of there being a distinction. Surface and depth were meaningless, when sandwiched between two things that both appeared endless. We seemed to be drifting further into now. And I intimately recognized that I was seeing eternity wrapped around the 360 degrees of my mind. I went to the back of the boat to try and explain what I felt had been revealed to me.
Before I can speak there’s a strike on one of the lines. Mark was the only one of us who heard it and his head jerked up rigid. Instinct took over and the next second, he had got the rod out of the holder and he’d set the hook, then he was reeling. I was in complete shock as Jack takes the wheel and within a few minutes there was Wahoo just off the stern of the boat. I remembered what I should be doing and I grabbed the gaff. The fish leaped into the air and I standing right at the boat side with the gaff, ready to kill it. My entire being becomes focused on that fish. Everything has taken on a startlingly almost terrifying level of clarity. I can see every fine grain detail of the ocean, the boat, and everyone in the boat. Mark pulled the fish in close enough for me to gaff it. I don’t think, my mind stops and my body reacts. I just swing the hook over my head, slamming it into the creature right below its gills. There’s a sickening crunch as the metal passes through the side and sinks into cartilage. The fish curls its body against the side of the boat. It thrashes crazily as we pull it into the boat. Once it’s over the side, Jack smashes it twice on the top of the head. Blood flies everywhere onto the white surface of the boat. It splatters and runs down into a shallow duct at the back of the boat. We’re all silent as the fish gives its last gasps and looks at us through eyes of oblivion. Its colors are almost beyond description: a diaphanous turquoise and emerald rainbow. It has a fin which runs from the top of its head to the tip of its tail. Within a few minutes the fin has collapsed. The colors begin to fade. Everything appears super-vibrant and magnificent. Every inch of the boat glows and vibrates. I touch the fish and feel its blood, scales and slime ooze onto my fingertips. There’s a small black notebook in my pocket, I open it and flip through the pages until I find a fresh one. Then I press my bloody thumb into the paper leaving a bloody thumbprint. “I want to preserve the soul” I mutter to myself. We’re all gathered around the innocent dead body of the fish and we’re smiling at what we have wrought.
And my action seems somehow fitting, as a secret part of a ceremony which had almost not been performed. The blood dried quickly, even as I began to close the book. But Mark grabbed the book from my hand and inscribed, “Dear Baby Dolphin. Thank you for this moment in time. I came and tasted your baby blood on my lips! Never trust a man with a tan! Captn. Mack.” It was pure poetry written right from the pure mind. It was a killer kissing his kill. I smiled and closed the book, staring out at the sea. And a thought which had been waiting for exactly the right words to express it, suddenly came to me….. “Jesus was a fisherman, too.”