"And I came to realize that the dreams I was having each and every night were not just mere memories of the day. When I closed my eyes and fell into a deep sleep, I entered a new reality not of my world. There I could do anything and everything. There I could be free. And the freedom was a freedom unlike any I had ever known back in my wakeful world. Thus the reason I chose to remain asleep. I escaped the bondage of life and found real life beyond the consciousness or my existence....."


I dreamt the world into being....


                                                   The Fish Tender
                                                   by Scott Crumley


I had written that as a part of a short story years ago. It was a part of a series of stories I had composed following my friend Jim Jackson and his new journey through the other side. I cannot for the life of me find that story in my files. It was a story about a man who found a pond and a story evolved around his coming to terms with life. The pond and the fish who lived in the pond seemed to be a lesson he had to experience and learn. I do remember parts of it, but the bulk of it escapes me.

There was a component of symbiosis between this wayfarer and those fish. Each day, for a while, he returned to the pond and shared his food with the fish. There was a stone ledge which overhung a part of the pond and on sunny days, that is where he would sit and think and eat and share his crumbs of bread with the hungry fish. Eventually, the fish would come to the edge of the pond, next to the ledge when they felt his approach. He would stomp on the stone and they would come to the surface....thus he became the fish tender.

I am sure there was some deeper message there of trust and relationship and mutual care and such....I just cannot remember. I believe he was dealing with what he had left behind in this world. Jim Jackson went off to Viet Nam in his real life. I remember he dated a wonderful girl while in college and they eventually got married before he shipped out. I think that is the timeline. Anyway, that war changed Jimbo. The marriage did not work and eventually he remarried a German woman when he went to live in Germany. I was a kid at the time. There was so much going on in my world. I was coming up to the age of being eligible for the Draft and my chance to go off to war. I remember the Jimbo that came back from Viet Nam and he was not the same young man who left for the war. I don't know. Perhaps his divorce was the first I had ever seen happen. It left me with plenty of questions about relationships and life and the cruelty of war. There were more victims than those who died in the jungles and cities over there.

Jimbo got a new chance in life. Things turned out pretty good. Life went on for us all. I slipped through the cracks and the war ended and I finished my degree and got married and divorced myself and remarried. My dreams changed. My relationships changed. My desires changed. My knowledge changed. I grew.

I dreamt my world into being. That was not so bad for a small town kid with big ideas of helping humanity.