Yesterday during visitation rounds, I saw the weirdest sight - a fish still breathing, but upside down. My brother thought it was dead at first, but on closer look the fins were still moving, and its eyes were wide open. Apparently it was shocked when a magnified face loomed next to the tank, so it crashed right into the glass and fainted. It did revive for a while, spent it's time floundering around, trying to reach the surface, and then ended up flipping over again, and slotted its body into a corner behind the oxygen pump.
For a moment there I think I actually identified with the fish, as much as I thought it hideous and grotesque and impossible to look at without cringing 2 seconds after. I totally understood the "The-world-leaves-me-disoriented-I-just-want-to-hide-in-a-corner-and-look-at-it-inverted" feeling. Maybe it's just because Chinese New Year always passes in a whirl of activity and faces, and it's a visual and digestive overload. Or maybe it's just one of my many defense mechanisms to help me cope with rapid influx of overwhelming thoughts, not always positive.
It's all the socialising that makes you realise how many opinions you have about other people, but you don't show it, out of propriety, out of the need to be nice and not to hurt people; zipping up at the right time is, I suppose, a prerequisite of being a civil human being. But there really is a fine line between honesty and brutality, between constructive criticism and facing censorship. And as much as you flagellate yourself for having nasty (but hilarious) thoughts pop up at the most inappropriate times, sometimes it does make socialising less tedious, and makes your smile a lot more spontaneously, which some people might perceive as genuinely sincere.
I'm totally evil, but who didn't know that already?
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