Fresh Eyes, Stale Eyes

I’ve mentioned Adele before, our long-lived twenty-five cent goldfish. My daughter accidentally won her in some school carnival, and brought her home. We got out an old gallon fishbowl, but the fish quickly outgrew it. So we resurrected a 20-gallon tank and bought a filter. She (I mean the fish, not the daughter, though I suppose it’s true for both) continues to thrive and grow. I sometimes watch her (the fish), the shining orange and silver pattern, the smooth glide through water, the fins, the flowing tail. I see her picking up and dropping gravel, looking for food. Sometimes I look down from the top of tank, amused by the distortion of diffraction, and catching a hint of the smell of inhabited water (pleasant in small doses).


Especially when I look down from the top I recall the numerous goldfish that came and went when I was a kid. I saw the same things, but with young eyes. Colorful gravel, colorful fish; all was new. The colors and smells and everything related more than mildly interested me, they fascinated me. I see them still, though I can’t name or individualize them, and I know the images have morphed and modified over time. But still, I see the fish of my memory in a way I don’t see Adele.


I think the difference is that the young me was absorbed by the images; the older me sees them intellectually. And I’m thinking that if I want my writing to be sharp and memorable, I have to be sure my descriptions go beyond the easy words. It’s too tempting to describe a scene with solid but dull words that have meaning to me, but are essentially intellectual concepts. I need to write, not as a well-seasoned adult who sees and categorizes and describes with those terms, but rather with the fresh eyes of a child.


Easy, of course, to say. Hard, of course, to do.