love of my life

my longest running obsession

now... when did this all begin? was it with the hit 2003 pixar film Finding Nemo? was it with the great barrier reef unit in 2nd grade that transformed the hallway into a colourful paper reef? or maybe it was those little goldfish we had in a tank that was way too small that i can barely remember because i was so young.
I'm really not sure what it was, but i do remember always loving fish and water. all those water toys (look at aquabuggy), and the cocomelon-for-old-zoomers that was baby einstein/neptune with the underwater scenes, duck puppet watching a washing machine, drinkingbird, and water+oil toys.

now, just to remind you that this is my site and that i can do whatever i want, here are some more thoughts and feelings i have about fish.

believe it or not, i'm not a huge ponyo stan (kiki's delivery service supremacy), but that part where that kid and ponyo wake up and see that their backdoor now opens on to water, with little fish and coelocanths and jellyfish all swimming around, is the best animated scene in history. this rating is purely based off my fish-related happiness scale which is the guiding principle of my life. if you havent seen this movie, i'm begging you to just google the words "ponyo scene flooding," which surprisingly showed me what i was thinking despite the caveman-like command.

for my 14th-16th birthdays, my one wish was to go to a fish store (it looked just like patrick's home from spongebob) and just look around at all the tanks. never bought a fish from there. but i looked forward to it so much.

I have been to 8 aquariums across 3 continents and 4 countries. worst one was seaside aquarium in oregon, usa. my main memory is an semi-underground area that is dark and cold as shit (bc oregon coast) and then massive wolf eels being the only thing in the tanks down there. i did not love this one. best one, even if only out of pure size/volume was the singapore aquarium. did you know that (at least at the time of visiting) that the largest sheet of glass in the world was at this aquarium? that was a big tank.

there's a ditch i walk past on my way to classes and sometimes when it rains hard enough, it gathers a stream of water and it pushes the grass down and it looks like long, flowing algae. everytime i see that, i imagine being a big fat koi fish, swimming through it like i am the most calm and happy creature on earth. i've started doing this even when it isnt rainy and i just imagine what where i am in that moment would look like if it was covered in like 6-8 inches of water and i was just a big ol' guy wiggling through it.

all this being said, i am humiliated to admit that i am scared to death of water. i will not go in lakes, rivers, ponds, seas, or the ocean. my parents have forced me to go snorkeling twice in my life and oooh my god. i am extremely grateful for the experiences i have had and the things i have seen, but one time when my dad was literally holding on to me while we were in water that was like 3 feet deep to practice for when we did it for realzies further out and i broke out of his hold and swim-sprinted back to shore and cried because i saw a sea cucumber. i love fish to an odd degree, but i am of the strong belief that they should stay in water, and i should stay on land. this also seems like a good time to note that i used to love fishing with my grandpa, and i love eating fish. the heart works in mysterious ways.

from early elementary school until we moved before 8th grade, we had a big saltwater tank. i would go through phases of obsessively noting every detail i possibly could on pieces of colourful construction paper, counting baby snails or starfish, or even algae specks daily. i would then tape these papers up and track everything over the month. i had this book called "Advanced Marine Aquarium Techniques" and that was my bible. i read it cover to cover so many times and considered it my duty to memorize everything in it.

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