Frank's Wild Years

Tom Waits once said that God is a fisherman, he sits out in his boat with a net, collecting people as they die and float to the surface. He also might have mentioned something about his height.

Whenever I look at pictures from the Hubble, upwards from my back yard, or the composition of sediment, and also whenever I see how small a blue whale is in comparison to the ocean, I feel pretty certain that I'm part of a science project, just a cell looking for the edge of the petri dish. We can write movies like The Truman Show but keep it in the fiction section and I'm just not so sure that's the case, although I'm quite sure that no one is watching. It's possible we got left on a shelf, you know.

I like to feel small and forgotten, or maybe I like to be reminded that I am. I have a great aunt who is in her 80's, lost a son in Vietnam, both breasts to cancer, and watched her husband almost die on Thanksgiving day. Whenever she was asked to reflect she said, "It all feels like a dream." No matter how bad it seems or was, it goes that fast, you all of a sudden wake up on the day you die to find out you never have to wake up again. This isn't a bad thing, most seem grateful.

So if you're young, go ahead and swim to the surface a time or two, look God in the eye, and tell him the fish ain't bitin'.

Swim, fish, swim.