My brother is a hobbyist. He likes to tinker, collect tubes of adhesive material, lug water around the house, befriend inventory clerks at obscure hobbying stores. It was toy trains for a while, woodworking on and off. But the longest relationship of his life has been with fish.
He studies fish in college now, but since elementary school our house has been slowly filling up with glass cages and their googly-eyed inhabitants. Now, I know you’ve seen your fill of timid guppies and polite, out-of-the-way angelfish and snoozefest goldfish. Well, “Feast your eyes on this,” as my brother would say. That’s his latest acquisition, and it thrills me to think something so neon, so inflammatory, so . . . bodacious . . . exists under the same roof as my mom’s pot lids and the linen closet and the drawer with all the rubberbands.
We’ve always been an aquarium family, not a beach family. Not loud, jumping up and down, two-piece bikini type people, but somber, reflective, long-sleeved T and hushed lighting people. A couple years ago one of my favorite writers, Ginger Strand, took up the subject in a Believer Magazine piece called Why Look at Fish?:
What is it about aquariums?
Walk into the cool, humming darkness of the zoo’s aquatic counterpart and something magical happens. Burbling blue light, darkened corridors, a silvery flash of fin, a ripple of aquatic wings: aquariums quiver with the promise of unearthly visions.
Strand’s newest book is Inventing Niagara: Beauty, Power, and Lies, coincidentally about another longstanding family favorite. That’s not particular to us, though–South Asian immigrant families *love* Niagara Falls. Maybe Strand explains why.
Tags: Obsessions