Coronavirus streets in Manchester - LXXVII

Leaps of fleshly walks

It had rained earlier besides the fact that there was a forecast of further rain episodes in Manchester. I was dressed in anticipation of adverse weather, but when I stepped out this afternoon to replenish my supply of cranberry juice that eases urinary tract issues, there was much to see.

There are people still adorning facemasks, they seem to be visitors from the Far East, in my case, I know that the Coronavirus is still about, five years on, because I only recently got my biannual booster, bringing my COVID-19 jabs to ten, in all.

However, as summer is now upon us, you cannot help but notice two things, the lips and the legs. The former is seen in both males and females, lips filled like balloons with fillers or Botox, all so unnaturally like big-lipped fish, very much the giant grouper or the Napoleon wrasse look. [A-Z Animals: Fish with Big Lips]

Flesh is not quite fresh

This is one case where beauty is hardly in the eye of the beholder other than whoever wants this unsightly cosmetic procedure that distorts from the natural and presents the utterly bizarre. For this and the latter issue, much as you want to look away, you are forced to see the indescribable that speaks louder than farce.

The rising mercury allows for the revealing of more skin, from shorts that should only be worn for a burlesque performance in a dingy poorly lit nightclub, well away from our common streets, to body parts that are best kept under wraps.

Whatever makes these fashion trends attractive fails to persuade me of either the self-awareness or the sensibleness of the purveyors. Yet, one must live and let live. Each time I walk through Manchester, one must curb the need to comment after seeing the outrageous to the dastardly.

It is still a bustling city of contrasts, changed and changing by circumstances, residents, and visitors alike. We cannot forget that the pandemic also wreaked havoc on our idyllic existence.

From futility to fruitfulness

As it ought

Indeed, I have faltered in my thought,
For long have I determinedly fought,
As a fisherman every night was fraught,
For the fish needed, never caught.

To your audience was I then brought,
And a boat for a soapbox you sought,
From which the people sat to be taught,
The parables of heaven you wrought.

Then the nets once cast for naught,
You spoke to me and I sighed to aught,
In response, you gave a grunt in retort,
Suddenly the greatest catch overwrought,
A boat and two were packed to the port.

In your words were a bounty bought,
Delivered from the pain of want and rot,
In miracles you ever generously allot,
To show we were never an afterthought.

Inspired by The Chosen, Series 1, Episode 4 – The Rock On Which It Is Built 

Innocent at sea

In the bait of innocence

I am innocent,
          He protests vehemently,
To those listening,
          He persuades so intently,

This is the innocence,
          You might well observe on a fishing boat,
Here with a fishing rod,
          Cast into the water with a visible float,

Then on the defensive,
          He avers to make the crucial insignificant,
By which time you are ensnared,
          And to run or flee you obviously can’t,

You are a victim and a slave,
          To the lure of words that have you in a grip,
Before you can come to,
          You have been taken on the longest trip,

For to be totally blameless,
          Is that rather longing wish,
And when absolved of guilt,
          Of what the bait said to the fish,

The piscine catch,
          Glistening beautifully in the sun,
Is taken to a new world,
          Way away from its sense of fun,

Prepared sumptuously,
          For a hungry and waiting palate,
Of what became a dish,
          Innocent is not what you’ll call the bait.

Thought Picnic: In our symbolic aquariums of our human existence

Fishes in a world

At a sauna there was an installed aquarium full of fishes of different sizes, colours and surprisingly temperaments. Some swam around excitedly even cresting where the air meets the water as if to take a breath, some idling listlessly and others apparently shy and docile hiding behind stones probably not wanting to be disturbed. The spectacle a calming effect on the observer.

I have always been fascinated about aquariums, though I wonder if the entertainment of human beings to the wonders of the deep in ponds, streams, rivers, lakes, seas and oceans are to any other purpose than the abuse of the predominance of humanity to the detriment of other life forms.

Obviously, they need to be studied and understood, the abuse and misuse of some has brought great health benefits to us, but is there is a better way?

The Pisces think tank

To an extent, I have begun to detest zoos and apart from the real effort of conservation brought on by our creating the loss of habitat for economic purposes, anthropomorphic climate change and hunting within the threat of extinction, we all can share this planet without exterminating each other.

The aquarium looked like a fish world and I began to put human thoughts in the heads of the fish. Do they think there are other aquariums like theirs just as we wonder if there are any Earth-like planets with inhabitants like us or lifeforms we can begin to understand? Goldilocks zones at distances that boggle the mind.

In each aquarium that we have built and filled with fishes, have we adopted the role of a demigod in making that nature suitable for their habitation? Keeping the water clean, ensuring it is oxygenated, feeding the fish, observing closely their health and wellbeing with the taking of action to arrest anomalies. Are we like fish to a divine being in the same sense?

By dorsal velocity

Consider a situation where the fish was able to escape its aquarium to experience life outside it and then we realise that to escape earth we need to take essential parts of our earthly environment with us, a life-supporting kit as we put a fiery rocket to our backsides to escape. It would be madness to the fish, it would have been madness to man just over a century ago.

Then just two days ago, I boarded an Airbus A380 with the capacity for a village from Johannesburg to Paris for a journey of 10 hours 55 minutes at 40,000 feet (12.192 km) altitude which in a straight line would be 5,430.95 miles (8,740.26 km). I did that return journey 5 times in the space of a year.

This our capacity for mad adventure is more or less the norm, yet, we would find it strange in fish, yet, we are gleefully entertained out at Hermanus, South Africa, between July and November when whales flip out of the water and we can watch from comfort terra firma.

Fishing for meaningfulness

None of my thoughts are fully formed on the comparison for aquariums and fish tanks to our earth of somewhat diminishing resources with explosive population growth in some parts of our world. However, I do recognise that we live in different kinds of aquariums within national boundaries that confer citizenship as well as limitations in travel where others have privileges, opportunities and means to leap between aquariums of humanity without much of a care about it.

Global travel, we have probably mastered, space travel after the moon landings has gone no further than International Space Station with considerably finite resources. Interstellar travel is still the stuff of wild imagination and science fiction, even that had helped our understanding of how to live better on earth.

The human body for all its resilience is still quite fragile, there is still much to learn about ourselves and the many organisms we share the earth with. I do wonder if the fish see us as some other lifeform and as they swim to the sides of the tank or the top of the water, they are trying to communicate with us and in all our human predominance masking our apparent idiocy we have not learnt to say a common hello to the fishes in our aquariums.