The Memory of Fish

Two straight posts about fish?

Not really. This one is about memory, but it was partly inspired by our resilient goldfish, Foxy.

Foxy came into our lives about two and a half years ago when some friends went on an extended trip and left him/her--how do you tell fish gender, anyway?-- with us to fish sit.

They never came back for him.

Fearing that Foxy would feel hurt and abandoned, we took him under our wings and tenderly cared for and nurtured him until one day we went on a five day trip and completely forgot about him. Upon returning home, Foxy was floating belly up in the fishbowl. I dropped some food in the bowl to see if he was really dead, and then left to find my little green fish net to transport him to his final ride down the porcelain express. But when I came back, Foxy was zooming around the bowl, lunging lustily towards his nibbles, making frisky little blooping sounds with his mouth. What a joker! Since then, I call him Resurrection Fish whenever I think about him, which, frankly, is about once every 2 months when his bowl, depleted to less than one-third its volume and coated with a murky green scum, needs cleaning.

That's when I pull out my trusty green fish net, chase Foxy around the bowl, dump him in a plastic cup with some water, and then proceed to de-slime his brackish environs.

How Foxy has survived this long, I don't know. (How long do goldfish live, anyway?)

Foxy and I don't have much of a relationship, but I am probably the second most important being in his very, very small world. The most important is Elizabeth, who feeds him everyday. I am second most important, because I am the deus ex machina that swoops down from the nether-worlds every two months, snares him in a green tractor beam and places him in solitary confinement. When Foxy emerges from this alien abduction, he is placed back into a world that has been cleansed every wit, even as if by fire.

The point is . . . what? I can't remember, which actually IS the point: remembering.

And now here is my profound thought: does Foxy remember any of this? In the midst of our little bi-monthly Master / Fish interactions, I sometimes think I can see some trace of anticipation in Foxy's beady little eyes when I lug his bowl towards the sink and produce the Green Wand of Mystical Powers. There seems to be a little more swagger to his swim, more purpose to his puckering, more flibber to his jibber. But in reality, I think I'm fooling myself, and I think that he experiences this infrequent ritual entirely afresh every time.

Perhaps this deep thought occurred to me because I had just finished reading a fascinating article in this month's National Geographic about memory. The well-written story bounced between analyses of the neurophysiologic basis of memory and the captivating stories of two real persons with extraordinary memory disorders. One woman, referred to as AJ, has the most perfect, photographic memory ever tested; she remembers, quite literally, almost everything that has ever happened to her. But to her, this is a tormenting phenomenon, as if the past is continually in the forefront of her mind, not allowing her to escape her ever-present regrets, mistakes and embarrasments.

The other person, a man known as EP, had the neuro pathways in his brain eroded by an bizarre infection, and now has absolutely no memory beyond about ten seconds. Imagine every ten seconds awakening entirely anew to the whole world, with no memory or insight into where you were or who you are . . . and not even the slightest awareness that this complete naivete was, in fact, abnormal. But EP, in contrast, is not tormented in the least. He appears quite happy, care-free, an unwitting Zen Meister living unencumbered by the past, unaware of any future, and entirely in the now.

These extremes of memory highlight the miraculous nature of that organ where we all live out our lives: the brain. In medical school, I remember a fellow student asking our neuroanatomy professor a "why" question about the brain. His response went something like this: "I cannot answer any 'why' questions about the brain. In this course, I will teach you the what, where and how of the brain. But for the answers to the why questions, you'll need to speak with a theologian or a philosopher. Because, frankly, I don't know why this miracle exists."

Three pounds of flesh. Three trillion synaptic connections. The home of genius and madness, of symphonies and psychosis, a computer, a soul, a muse, a miracle. The most powerful tool in all of creation.

I'm talking, of course, about Foxy's brain.