Fich, Frank and Serge

Fich looks hungry. And when I say hungry, I mean that she is bobbing gradually at the top of the tank, giving me this look like, feed me. So I extract one of these tiny crisps from the container that Berit spilled most of onto the floor. A bit of a loss, but at one crisp per day, even with 80% of the container gone, we still have a several month supply. A fish is not what you/d call a high investment pet.

So I take one of these crisps, and I am carefully crumbling it between my thumb and forefinger, dropping just the tiniest crumbs into the water as slowly as possible so that Fich can eat each one, rather than have most of them descend beneath the blue rock floor before she gets a chance to find them. I’ve got some weird Frank Zappa orchestral fusion on the hifi and am kind of zoning out on that and the fish when I hear a deep and resonant voice intone my name. “Hey, Mark.”

I'm the only one in the house, but again I’m so completely zoned into that total Fich/Zappa meditative state of mind - you know what I mean - that it doesn't phase me, and for a minute, I don't look up. I just remark internally how it’s interesting to hear a deep and resonant male voice say my name, perhaps with the undercurrent of an assumption of some spirit of the universe acknowledging my presence. Finally.

But I do look up, and it's Serge, the young man who currently lives in my basement. I forgot about Serge. Serge sleeps during the day and works at night. Like the elves. So I forget about him. That he exists. I tell him as much, explaining that I’m in the Fich zone. Serge asks about the music, and we talk about Frank Zappa for roughly 30 seconds of the 17 minute song before he leaves for work. I join Fich in an afternoon snack and sit down to write this.