By Robert A. Durkin
Ah, yes, fear, “a thousand forms of fear.” I have only the slightest memory of once having been without fear. And I have begun to suspect that its absence is an attribute only of the very young human animal.
Elders, first in the best interest of their offspring, and then from the depths of inherited fears and deeply ingrained habits and fears of their own, instill fear in their young. Sadly many such installations are done without the essential component of an off switch, or even a damper that can be used to turn an irrational raging blaze into a useful warm campfire, or a manageable torch to light our way in darkness.
We will, on occasion, observe behavior in another which we described as enviable, virtuous “fearlessness.” It is, of course, nothing of the sort. As the colloquialism goes: “Fear is courage that has eaten its breakfast,” or, in some less secular circles, to have said its prayers.
I have lived with, and to no uncertain extent been determined by, my fears, and in a very real sense these fears were not inherently mine; they were installed, modified and accelerated by others’ older, unaddressed fears, so that the task of countering my own fears seems to have been magnified all out of proportion by the weight of the line dragging along generations of fear.
I think of the task of catching a fish called fear.
I have the tools: a boat outfitted to float on various waters, a life jacket to keep me afloat should I fall overboard, and a rod-and-reel and line, and hooks and sinkers, and perhaps the proper lure or bait. As the boat trolls steadily ahead upon the sea, I sit with a wavering courage in the stern, letting my line out in hopes of catching, getting hold of my prey — my fear.
My fear is old and cagey and has survived generations of fisherman, many more skilled than I. It has taken a piece of many of them back under the surface and into the darkness in which it hides, and thrives. Think of Hemingway’s Old Man, or, more frighteningly, Melville’s Ahab, staggering about the Pequod, matching his wooden leg to the peg holes that his un-masting has compelled him to drill into the deck.
As my line gets longer and longer, farther from the strength and safety of my reel, it finds itself attached to seaweed, and flotsam, and soon entangles with other, older lines, carrying their own lost lures and weights.
And so, when my crafty, sharp-toothed foe finally launches his swift, silent attack, and I feel the sting of the line against my hand, hear the sound of the spinner running wildly out of control, I seize all of my strength and resources to reel the monster in, to land the unseen sea creature once and for all.
But suddenly my battle is not just between myself and the fish. On my line, dragging against my best efforts, are the weights and lures of a hundred years of failed fisherman. I am not simply trying to capture my fear; I am trying to capture fear itself.
Once, after many days both stormy and sunny, spent upon waters both turbulent and calm, “The Fish” bites — this is “The Big One.” A fight, both familiar and new, more difficult than any earlier battle, ensues.
Most days, the finned foe prevails, but on this day, I will not fail.
Although sunburned, or perhaps cold and wet, I land my “enemy,” and both exhausted and triumphant, I stand, staring down at his flopping, water-starved convulsions on the deck.
The American poet Elizabeth Bishop (“The Fish”) will pick up our story here and, as is so often the case, beautifully tell what I only hope to share of my understanding of what ensues:
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels — until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.
Yes, today I have won, but my real “victory” comes not when I beat to death my landed foe with my wooden billy, but when I seize him, hold him in my hands, breathe with him, smile at him, smile at my fear — and I release them both, and myself, into the freedom that is our common sea.
Robert A. Durkin, who splits his time between Juno Beach, Florida, and Roslyn, New York, is a writer and a former 40-year resident of the East End, who continues to both write about the Hamptons and “cast an expatriate’s (occasionally wistful) eye eastward.”
More Posts from Viewpoint
