On Fishing
Brian Clarke
SOMETIMES, when sitting out there by the river alone, especially at dusk, I begin to fold into myself and my thoughts. Then even thinking fades away. I seem to liquefy, to melt into the physical world shawled about me, to dissolve into the water’s curlings and slidings, its soft easings and crinklings, its twiddling little vortices and its washes of light. I go, though not consciously, to some other place.
Later, as if unprompted, the world takes form again, sounds separate and become distinct again and I look at my watch. Ten minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour. I do not know where I have been, but it has been somewhere deep down and I suspect far back, perhaps near that place where everything began.
Wherever that place is, I go there gladly. It is somewhere deep-healing and it makes me whole. It is to that place and space that I dedicate this book: to that place where the physical passes through me like ether – and to fishing, which magics me there.
Table of Contents
A Definition of the Impossible