07.16.08
Posted in The Sink at 9:35 pm by Dan Jensen
Two red-orange and black koi swam in the small, clear pool. Clover burst from the water line, up the artifically naturalistic banks like a miniature rain forest.
The boys dreamed. Their dreams opened in the warm light of the Spring afternoon. The sun warmed the doors of their eyes, and the future was born.
How long would the two koi live?
Were there any other koi quite like them? … anywhere?
Mehrzad reclined amidst the pumpkin and the watermelon, the sunlight soaking into his face, his hands, and his clothes. His spirit looked down into a pool stirring with currents of koi.
He sat up, and turned to his left. “Do you think we could make more koi? … from these?”
“Maybe.” Peter the fisherman laid back behind his eyelids and reiterated, “maybe we could.”
A fish is bound to die sooner or later, but if it has offspring, maybe it lives on through them. Maybe they wouldn’t look exactly the same, but even a single fish can change its colors. Lizards even shed their skin. Parenthood can be like that: like an old, tattered phoenix, rising young and perfect from the ashes of its mortality.
There was a mission at hand for anyone who would seek to deliver the gift of immortality. In that sunny moment, the boys chose to accept it.
At recess, they leaned against one of the elm trees lining the schoolyard, talking shop. How to find out how to breed koi? How to find a koi breeder? Check the phone books at the library. Pet stores. Suppliers. Gardeners.
They soon determined that reproduction wouldn’t be enough. The population would be too much at risk in the boys’ little garden pools, so they hatched a distribution scheme: they would market their hatchlings, and spend the proceeds of their commerce on more fish farming. The spawn would survive beyond the efforts of the boys themselves.
They wouldn’t stop at the sale. They would evangelize the aesthetic, psychological, and spiritual benefits of koi stewardship throughout the Sink, until the line of their two koi would finally sustain itself.
The shade of the old walnut tree crept across the boys’ faces, as the sun drifted into the West. How much time had passed they could only calculate; it could not be perceived.
They rose to their feet and made their ways home, a single future in their eyes as their feet followed their diverging paths into the present.
©2008 Dan J. Jensen
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07.15.08
Posted in The Sink at 9:38 pm by Dan Jensen
The toads moved out across the Sink under the cover of night, crawling left-right-left on their soft bellies like commandos under the cantaloupe and corn and parsley. As they crossed the Maginot Line, one would drop into a trench, then another would fall into a vertical shaft; one not knowing the fate of the next, unable to proceed with the nocturnal assault.
Boys appeared after daybreak, inspecting the shafts and trenches. Five last night. A dozen tonight. Almost a record. The invaders were corralled in the temporary holding pen, teased, sent through obstacle courses, launched in model rockets, set free, and re-captured the following morning, or the morning after.
©2008 Dan J. Jensen
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06.12.08
Posted in The Sink at 12:31 am by Dan Jensen
“Look—”, started Mehrzad, freeing a hand to point forward into the water.
“Yeah …”, Peter replied, keeping both hands on the net.
They saw flashes of blood-orange in the murky water before them.
Mehrzad stumbled in the muck of the ditch bottom as they hastily pressed toward the opposite net. They dragged one net between them through the water to the other net, which they propped up between the two posts they’d borrowed for the task. When they came to the standing net, they held the nets together and hoped to have trapped a fish. When they came together this time, they had nothing, so they climbed up the bank, walked back along the ditch, and tried again. They made three more sweeps before they trapped something.
Peter saw the fish thrashing and dove straightaway into the nets to tackle the fish between them. “Get the bag!”, he gasped from the surface as he wrestled the fish. Mehrzad pulled off the pack, and pulled out a trash sack. He unfolded it and dropped to his knees to cover the bulge in the net with the bag. With no small effort, they finally managed to get the net away from the fish, and remove it from the bag. They carried the bag, bulging with irrigation water, up the bank together. The fish whipped around in the bag like a giant goldfish.
When they got to Peter’s house, they rushed through the side gate in single file, and lowered the bag into the pond to allow the fish to adjust to the pond’s temperature. Each standing in the pond, they held the mouth of the bag open, and looked down at their prize. They exchanged triumphant grins, then gazed back down into the bag.
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
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06.10.08
Posted in The Sink at 8:14 pm by Dan Jensen
Angling is a special kind of hunt. It is, like most forms of fishing, a form of trapping. Angling is unique, though, for a couple of reasons. First, the trap is in contact with the angler’s body when it’s sprung; and second, the trap is sprung with little or no warning to the angler. I don’t suppose there is a feeling quite like that first tug on the line. It surprises the angler as though he were waiting in complete darkness at the end of a wire.
Thus described, angling runs contrary to the character of modern life, and it grows more and more averse to the modern every year.
The boys sat by their lines, silent most of the time. They’d cast in their hooks in the same patch of bubbling water, hoping that the bubbles were a sign of carp rooting around the bottom. They’d chummed the area a bit to hedge their bet.
They talked for awhile about catching fertilizer, but the conversation turned to koi before long. Peter asked Mehrzad if he could keep it secret. He didn’t want every kid at school coming over with rods and bb guns.
Mehrzad consented.
“What if you catch too much for your garden?,” Mehrzad inquired.
“I just leave them out for the cats and dogs. A book I read says they’ll breed with the koi and ruin their colors.”
“So you think there are more of those koi in there?”
“I hope so.”
The boys fished throughout much of that Spring and Summer. They never caught a koi. As the water levels in the ditch began to recede. Peter became doubtful and Mehrzad began to doubt Peter. They moved their operation upstream once their favorite spots dried up.
Occasionally, they would see a carp carcass rotting on the ditch bottom. Mehrzad stopped and looked down at the carcass. He turned to Peter: “what if we got a big net and dragged it up the canal?”
“Is that against the law?”
“Maybe. … Maybe we wouldn’t get caught.”
“We could carry the net in a backpack. You know, just in case someone sees us.”
So they did. They bought a used volleyball net from the Salvation Army store, and cut it in half. They stitched many of the square gaps in half with kite line. They grabbed a pair of posts, borrowed a small backpack and a Hefty bag, and headed up Peoples Ditch, in search of shallow stretches and a surefire fish farming scheme.
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
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Posted in The Sink at 6:18 pm by Dan Jensen
Mehrzad approached Peter at recess with the eternal question, “Did you catch something?”
Peter replied with a slanted nod.
Mehrzad continued,”I think I might need some fertilizer for my garden. Do you think I could fish on your canal?”
“It’s not my canal. .. Sure.”
“Great. I’ve been saving up for a fishing pole. … Do you ever catch anything else?”
“Sometimes.”
“Like what?”
Peter hesitated, then answered, “Koi. I think there are catfish in there too.”
Mehrzad had not heard of koi, but he didn’t want to admit that. He was getting out of his depth, so he decided to stop asking questions.
A couple days later, Mehrzad watched Peter reel in a big grey carp. Mehrzad then asked Peter if he could watch what Peter did with the fish. The boys got up and walked to Peter’s house, walked around the side to the back yard. Peter then dropped the fish on a board, walked into the garage and returned with an axe, which he used to promptly chop up the large fish. He then took the board over to what appeared to be a compost pile, and mixed the fish into the stew.
Mehrzad noticed a pond in the garden, and wandered over to it. He spotted a large, red-orange and black fish in the pond. The red-orange and black patches interplayed in the shaded pond to give the impression of underwater flames.
Mehrzad asked across the yard, “what kind of fish is this?”
“It’s a koi. I think they call it ‘hi utsuri’ in Japanese.”
“You speak Japanese?”
“No. I’m Chinese. Well—I mean, I don’t really speak Chinese either.”
“Wow. … Where’d you get it?”
Peter hesitated, then admitted, “the canal.”
“Hey. I can’t wait to get a fishing pole now!”
“I don’t know if there are any more.”
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
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06.09.08
Posted in The Sink at 4:04 pm by Dan Jensen
After that first walk along the ditch, Mehrzad would sometimes take that way home. He might not if he had to pee. He often had too, since he didn’t like using the school restrooms, there was so much teasing and bullying there.
One afternoon he encountered a boy he knew from school, sitting on the bank of the ditch, with a fishing pole and a line in the water. The pole was propped up on two twigs, each cut just beyond their branching points to form cradles for the pole.
“Hi Peter,” Mehrzad opened.
“Hi Mehrzad,” the boy replied. He seemed wary to Mehrzad.
The Iranian-American boy stood in place, looking over his Chinese-American classmate, then asked, “Do ever catch anything?”
“Yeah.”
“Really? What?”
“Carp.”
“Do you eat carp?”
“No. I’m not allowed to eat anything out of the canal.”
Mehrzad stood an looked down into the water. He looked at the open can of sweet corn by Peter’s side.
“What do you do with the fish?”
“I fertilize my garden with them.”
“You have a garden? I have a garden too.”
“Yeah?,” Peter replied with an extra look at Mehrzad.
“Yeah. I just started though. I planted corn and cantaloupe and stuff. My mom and dad say Persians are good gardeners.”
“Better than Japanese?”
“I don’t know.”
Mehrzad looked at the pole and the makeshift stand, and asked, “why don’t you just hold the pole?”
“Sometimes you have to wait a long time for carp to bite. … And you don’t want to disturb the bait.”
Mehrzad paused, then watched. “Ok. … Bye.” He could feel his bladder prodding him.
“Bye.”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
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06.08.08
Posted in The Sink, San Joaquin Valley at 3:00 pm by Dan Jensen
THE CARP BECAME A NUISANCE TO THE CALIFORNIA FARMERS.
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 17.—Samuel Page, who owns a farm east of Hanford, states that the introduction of carp into the streams of the valley has fastened one of the worst curses on the irrigated section that the farmers have to contend with. Kings Rivers and the ditches flowing out of it furnish water for Lucerne Valley. Wherever the water goes the fish go, even into the small ditches which flow into the vineyards, orchards, or gardens.
Mr. Page states that the carp, being a species of sucker and having the mouth peculiar to that variety of fish, sucks the roots out of the banks out of the ditches, causing the banks to wash out. Their destructive operations are not confined to the small ditches, for Mr. Page states that he has seen places where the fish have eaten into the high banks on large ditches at least a foot. Mr. Page got rid of the fish in some of the small ditches, last year, by hauling soil strongly impregnated with alkali, of which there are a number of spots on his farm, and making ditch banks out of it. The fish would not touch alkali soil, and where the ditch was stopped at both ends the alkali leaked out into the water and killed off all the fish. He proposes hauling enough alkali soil next Spring to the ditch banks to keep the fish away from his ditches.
Besides hurting the banks the fish create a terrible stench in the ditches when water stops flowing in and the fish are left there to perish in the sun.
The New York Times, October 18, 1891
Note: Lucerne Valley is the old name of the Mussel Slough area, which includes present-day Hanford. There is a neighborhood named Lucerne just north of Hanford, where 10th and Flint Avenues cross.
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06.06.08
Posted in The Sink at 8:45 pm by Dan Jensen
Mehrzad watched the second hand complete its final revolution. With the ring of the bell, the schoolroom was filled with a muffled chorus of chairs shifting on indoor-outdoor carpet. Mehrzad watched the sunlight flare through the exit, and watched his classmates stream out into the light. He felt the sweat collect between his fingers and the edge of his books, and reached for his violin case.
His teacher, Ms. Mayer, glanced at him from her desk, and he uncoiled from his desk. He watched the carpet sweep beneath him as the doorway approached him. He turned into the covered walkway, and once clear of the door, stalled beneath the overhead vent windows. When he heard Ms. Mayer grab her things, he resumed walking out to Monroe Drive.
Oregon Holocaust Memorial by P. Medved
“I don’t like it when funny-looking queers make me wait,” said Stewart. “what have you got for m–what’s in there?” Stewart ripped the violin case out of Mehrzad’s grip. He opened it, pulled out the violin, and began strumming it like a guitar. The bridge collapsed under Stewart’s pounding. He complained, “this thing is cheap!”, and shoved it into Mehrzad’s arms.
Stewart walked off and Mehrzad put the broken violin into its case. He picked up his books and continued home.
Mehrzad watched the second hand complete its final revolution. With the ring of the bell, the schoolroom was filled with a muffled chorus of chairs shifting on indoor-outdoor carpet. Mehrzad watched the sunlight flare through the exit, and watched his classmates stream out into the light. He felt the sweat collect between his fingers and the edge of his books, and almost reached for his violin case.
Ms. Mayer glanced at him from her desk, and he uncoiled from his desk. He watched the carpet sweep beneath him as the doorway approached him. He turned into the covered walkway, and once clear of the door, stalled beneath the overhead vent windows. When he heard Ms. Mayer grab her things, he resumed walking out to Monroe Drive, then he turned around and headed for the Cortner Street gate.
He sprinted across 11th Avenue into Hidden Valley Park. Several carp carcasses were partially visible through the murk. He stepped to the bank and poked a carcass with a stick several times, watching it bob in and out of sight.
He threw the stick in the pond and walked along the bank. The grass was a sickening dark green along the shore. He noticed the ditch as he came around the far side of the pond. He followed the ditch down to his street, and turned home. He watched asphalt and concrete pass beneath his shuffling feet.
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
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06.03.08
Posted in The Sink at 5:08 pm by Dan Jensen
There’s a very special place in Sinktown called Hidden Valley. It’s not far from the elementary school that Mehrzad attended. He’d heard of it a number of times before he ever saw it. He imagined that it must be in a deep, narrow ravine, easy to miss because of the overwhelming flatness of the Sink, not unlike the Underground Gardens in Fresno that he’d recently seen on a school field trip. In the Sink, something as ordinary as a hole in the ground could seem like a violation of the laws of Nature—an affront to God; hence wildly mysterious.
Mehrzad had a schoolmate named Seamus who lived in the neighborhood of the school. Sometimes Mehrzad would go to Seamus’ house after school to watch him torture his cat, wrestle a vicious German shepherd, or light a fire in a trash can. One day, after Seamus returned to school with stitches in his scalp from the German shepherd incident, he invited Mehrzad to go fishing with him at Hidden Valley. They dropped by Seamus’ house so he could pick up his .22 caliber rifle, then they cut through an orchard toward Hidden Valley.
Hidden Valley, it turned out, was not a valley at all, but a rather a city park drawn out across a shallow flood course, featuring a shallow, brownwater reservoir that seemed to be impersonating a pond, holding irrigation water from the adjacent Peoples Ditch. Only in Sinktown could this be called a park. As for the name, whoever came up with it must have had a chuckle.
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Mehrzad looked down into the murky shallows as Seamus popped little yellow capsules into the water. Before long, pale carp carcasses began to float to the top of the motionless surface. Mehrzad concealed his horror as Seamus enumerated his success. When Seamus realized he was hogging all the fun, he offered up the rifle to Mehrzad. Mehrzad thanked him and declined. Once Seamus was out of shells and had completed the final tally, they turned back to his house. Mehrzad continued home from there, internalizing the anticlimax and the massacre.
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
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03.18.08
Posted in seeker, The Sink at 8:09 pm by Dan Jensen
Mehrzad was raised in a religious household. His family was Iranian and Muslim, though his parents were not Shi’a or even Sunni. They didn’t mind being the only Muslims in Sinktown, as they were not suited to the specific practices of most Muslims, a fact that would inevitably produce friction in a Muslim community.
Mehrzad played violin. As a boy, he did this as a matter of obedience to his parents and as a religious obligation, for music was the only form of prayer practiced in the Kariyani household.
Mehrzad’s parents were radical Islamists, but not the kind of inflammatory stereotype that the appellation Islamist is likely to conjure up. The Kariyani sect is fundamentalist with a single fundamental: monotheism. For him, “one God” meant that no one man or ideal can represent God. Even Muhammad, for him, could only have been a man of his time and place, and the Qur’an was no more than a book of its time and place. Still, both Muhammad and the Qur’an meant a great deal to Dr. Kariyani as a Muslim, even though he would call other Muslims “idolators” for making the Prophet and the Qur’an “partners with God”. Though for most Muslims an absolute, unwavering belief in the Qur’an and the traditions of the Prophet is the foundation of their faith, Dr. Kariyani would often assert that “belief is just a pretty name for idolatry“.
So it was that the Kariyani boys, as good Muslims, would perform their prayers five times daily. Each boy would pick up his instrument, face their Qiblah, and reverently perform his scales or a song. For most Muslims, facing the Qiblah means turning toward the Ka’aba, a pre-Islamic stone idol in Mecca. The Kariyanis did not do this, for obvious reasons. Instead, they faced the sun, which meant that they would face a different direction each time. In the morning, they would face the East. In the evening, they would face the West. At noon, they would turn opposite the shadows on the ground outdoors. When praying during moonlit nights, they would face the moon. “We face the light,” Mr. and Mrs. Kariyani would often say. They did this as Iranian Muslims, knowing that their ancestors turned toward fires and other light sources during prayer. The Iranians had prayed five times daily long before Muhammad, and their prayers were songs.
“Words are inadequate for prayer,” the elder Kariyanis would occasionally insist, though Mrs. Kariyani would still chant the orthodox Islamic prayers of her childhood. She would defend her action by pointing out that she did not speak Arabic or understand the words. She insisted that it was the chanting and the sound of the words that aroused the spirit; not the meaning of the words.
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
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