Photography And Half-Thoughts By Mitchell Hegman

...because some of it is pretty and some of it is not.

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Damn You, Big Fish

I often dream of fish.  I have no way of explaining this, but my dreams are regularly swimming with fish, jumping with them.  This has been so for as long as I can remember.  Trout.  Small fish gathering about me in clear waters.  Fish from the sea 
Why not dogs?
Why not songbirds?
I don’t know.
For the last two weeks, I have been sparring with the flu.  More recently, I have been sleeping fitfully at night.  Yesterday, by 2:00 afternoon, after jabbing at my computer for the better part of the day, I flopped back on my sofa, thinking I might catch a nap.  I lay there for perhaps fifteen minutes, gradually shrinking away from the daylight and the immediate sounds of light winds nosing at the bay windows.
Finally, I settled into a shallow state of dream.  I was fishing inside some kind of industrial building whose lower levels were filled with water and populated with dark fish.  On my second cast into one of the lower level lochs, a big fish struck.  As habit dictates, I pulled back hard on my fishing rod to set the hook.
I woke with a jerk on my sofa.  I lay there confused, blinking forcefully to ward off the too-bright light.
Damn you, big fish!

-- Mitchell Hegman  

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