CROSSROADS 11. ABOUT A FISH AND A MAN LANDING ON THE MOON

ABOUT A FISH AND A MAN LANDING ON THE MOON

I came out of the fish bowl to see the man landing on the moon. I had spent nine months trying to calculate precisely how much time it would take for my eyes to grow to the point I could see that extraordinary event for humankind.

Nine months swimming, or actually floating restless, seems like a short time, but for me it was like an entire life. Indeed, it was an entire life-in-the-making; an event that wasn’t streamlined live because there weren’t reality shows back in the late 60s.

As it would happen later on the approaching time to the beginning of the new millennium, those late 60s were times of hope, of embracing the stranger, of discovery, music and love. At that time when I was in that fleshy incubator that was my mother’s womb, I didn’t really understand none of that but I guessed that those vibes were somehow infiltrating into my blood stream. Because regardless and due to the life experiences that I was to go through my life outside the bubble; I would endlessly carry with me the spirit of those times.

During those nine months, the music of the Beatles would instill in me a sense of beauty in sounds, of harmonious joy, of music and pauses. Those same sounds and silences cycles that I would feel happening outside my small aquarium. It was like day and night, listening to words, to murmuring, to sounds of others, of beings I didn’t know they even exist.

I don’t remember exactly the moment that I began to understand that I was there but I could only guess that it was when my tiny brain started functioning. It was quite weird to realize my existence just to learn right away that I was quite moveless and connected by a tube to something outside me.

Of course, I didn’t have any idea of where I was and no clue that it was actually inside my mother, another human being. That would have been a very wild thought. Luckily, at that stage of my life, my thoughts were quite simpler, such as “is it now a good time to try pushing my legs towards the walls and run away” or “shall I try a mortal jump without breaking the cord that delivers my food every day”. In a way, my complex neurosis was already pretty active during those somehow simple but intense day cycles.

Day and night, sky and earth. Those Genesis biblical terms were still years away from my consciousness but that binary option was for me reduced to “my carrier is moving” or “my carrier is still”. So although I couldn’t really understand the idea of night sleep I did feel the quietness, the calmness of the time my mom would just be resting after a quite active day.

And then there was the tube. Yes, that tube that was bringing me the nutrients that helped me grow and become someone one day. It was such a comfortable place to be, one where everything I needed would just come without making any single effort. No baby crying, no child walking, no adult going to work for making a living. Just being in a place where my needs were taken care. Still, there was something mysterious about the tube. Because it wasn’t just the source of my lunches and dinners, there was something else coming down the road.

Indeed, the tube was the connection between myself and my mother. I could feel each one of her steps, each one of her heartbeats and beyond. For many reasons I not completely learned later on, that period was an emotional rollercoaster for her. Thus, I think that was the reason that I developed first my emotions and then my mind, what we would call today my emotional intelligence earlier than my IQ. That definitely made me an emotional baby rather than the scientific genius I would never want to be or be.

That would also explain my clowning modes and modes that should be part of who I still am almost half century later. That essential need of feeding laugh to my crying mom taught me the incredible power of using my emotions to bring good. Although sometimes it could have become a burden like for superheroes who want just to be normal or like Moses who wanted to run away from his liberator role, I learned later to live with that and enjoy how that was an essential part of who am I.

Back then, spending that wonderful prelude-to-life holiday inside the womb, it was simply fun, it was just reducing my existence to the act of giving my simple movements and emotions in exchange for the simplest love that ever existed.  

And when I finally came out, love was in the air, in the late 60s when the sun was let shine, when the sky was already beyond our limit and wars were there to end. I was somehow in shock to realize the strange word around me, all those creatures and faces and smiles and “pupipupi” sounds.

But my answer was ready after all those months of training and preparation. As I came to being a living creature IN this word, I shared my smiley face, my hyperactive energy, my sounds and my simple and somehow intense love.

 A few moments later, I would see the man landing in the moon. Free of understanding the significance of the moment, I could grab the enormity of the step for those around me, I could feel the wonder and celebration of that incredible step. And then I myself decided to make and extraordinary step for humankind myself and suddenly I moved my arm , extended my hand in front of my mom and my dad. And it was at that moment that they succeeded to grasp the magnificence of the instant we just all witnessed in the evolution of life.

(c) Jorge Diener 2016