Underwater the Fish Don’t Stink

“Underwater the fish don’t stink.”
    -Bobby’s World
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggkQ6JPew2E

Generally, when something stinks, it’s a good indication that something or someone is in the wrong place.  For instance, if you have a dog, and you come home and your house smells like shit, your first assumption will probably be, “Oh man, my dog shat in the house again.”  Which is, of course, the wrong place for your dog to shit.

Conversely, if you walk into a bathroom after someone has just taken a massive dump, and the stench is so bad that it wraps around your face like a wet towel, your first reaction will be, “I am in the wrong place. I need to go.”  You know there is nothing inherently wrong with the bathroom, because bathrooms will sometimes stink (although depending on how bad the smell is, there could be something wrong with the previous users’ digestive system).  Anyway, in this case the problem is yourself.  You walked into the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Same thing with jobs, relationships, mindsets, perceptions, desires and dreams.  If it stinks, something is in the wrong place.  If you want it to stop smelling, you’re going to have to move some things you don’t want to touch.  If you leave the dogshit in the living room, it’s going to stink.  Sure, you can spray Febreeze and light scented candles, but that only goes so far.  At the end of the day, you’ve still got a pile of shit on your floor.  I know it’s messy, but you’ve got to pick it up. 

Or to restate differently:

Like on a map at a rest stop, You Are Here.  Physically, emotionally, spiritually.  But sometimes you make the rest stop your home.  You bring in a bed, you wheel in a TV, you start using a hotpot to cook Raman Noodles in the bathroom.  You forget that this place is a rest stop on the interstate.  You forget (maybe you never knew) where you wanted to go in the first place.  But deep, deep down, you want to be somewhere else. Meanwhile you’re eating dinner every night from the vending machines, scrubbing yourself with hand sanitizer in the bathroom, reading pamphlets about theme parks and campgrounds like they’re literature, and telling yourself, “This is good.  This works.”  But this is not good.  You Are Here.  But you don’t have to stay.

Or to restate differently:

You walled off the door to your basement, maybe a long time ago.  You forgot you even had a basement.  But now the wall has come down.  You stand at the foot of the steps.  It is dark, and you’re scared to descend.  It’s okay.  If you want, you can take the hand of someone you love.  They can go with you (to an extent).

I’m writing this for myself, to remind myself.  To listen to that Voice, the good voice, the One who whispers but rarely screams.  It speaks of hope.  When I listen very closely, it tells me

I can be truth
I can be love
I can be beauty
I can be
I can shake the foundations of stagnancy and deceit, wherever I set my gait and gaze. I can walk through myself (I have, and will again) to discover, to praise, to condemn, to nurture and to raze, and yet always know that I can be

I don’t always know what is good, and never what is best, but I understand that there is good.  And I believe that I can be 

I suppose the point isn’t to fix yourself, bit by bit like some poorly-built machine, until finally you can say to yourself, “I flawlessly operate.”  No.  No.  But to move, to always move, with courage and the best of intentions, with of a vision of God (albeit often faint) as a light in the distance, and a light inside yourself.  To fuck up. To hurt. To feel moments of rapture, and sorrow, and loss, and unimaginable gain. To operate, not flawlessly, but with as little preprogramming as possible.

This is what I have to remind myself.  Cus, you know, it’s easy to forget.