Details

When we're asked what a fish looks like, what it REALLY looks like, to be as accurate and true as possible, what do we imagine? Perhaps it's a traditional scientific illustration/photograph, a perfect side view, top view, bottom view. Every detail is replicated in stunning detail, the colors of the scales, the tiny curves in the fins. But no fish looks exactly like that, one might have a dorsal fin that has sharper edges, another might have duller colors due to their diet.

Even beyond that, ask someone to describe what a fish looks like, and you'll be presented with a wide range of answers. Someone might say the salmon they saw had a fat body, the width being attributed to the angle in which the person saw the fish and how the light's refraction. Ask someone that was swimming with sharks and they might speak of wide jaws and large teeth, the size corresponding less to what was seen and closer to what was felt.

Which is closer to the truth? Closer to reality? Western science might propose an answer, break out the rulers, use the most color-accurate cameras (even that is up for dispute, color-correct to be true to what?), and start measuring and quantifying. But why adhere to a singular truth as dictated by Western science? How is any other interpretation any less true, why can't we hold multiple truths and realities in our hands?

When the very building blocks of nature, what is happening at the subatomic level, is full of things like the wave-particle duality, why should we reduce the multitudes that we regularly experience? Perhaps a fisherman will exaggerate how bright the scales were of a salmon they caught, as the sun glistened off its skin, but is it any less true? Does it not hold truth-y elements that are lost in a light-source adjusted photograph of the same species of salmon? (If anything, one would more likely encounter a salmon glistening from how the sun hits it than a salmon in some diffused light source.)

Once we start to open ourselves to the possibility of many realities, many fish, suddenly the possibilities also begin to multiply. The color of the salmon's skin becomes less a pursuit of what hex code it maps to, and more a poetic celebration of the interconnected ways that we all observe and experience. It's no longer the color of the salmon, it's the color of the salmon in relation to how bright the sun is, it's the color of the salmon depending on how weary the eyes of the observer are, it's the color of the salmon based on how our mind maps pattern and experiences (the salmon is mud, the salmon is like that nice dinner I had in Paris, etc.)

When we open ourselves to these fluid multitudes, away from a rigid (often white, often institutional) singular reality, not only does it allow more possibilities to happen, it also better contextualize the realities we are immersed in currently. By seeing many fish in one, we give more room to understand why people have the perspectives they do, there's more room to develop empathy when we understand that our varied lived experiences and ways of processing create different truths. Likewise, by opening the possibilities, it is also an exercise in expansiveness for us in imagining futures—to envision beyond what is in front of us.

fishlore is a field guide on fish, but instead of using the same template to describe each fish, their geographic location, their breeding habits, etc, it will be a book that hopes to chart every fish in a multitude of ways. The entry on Rainbow Trout as a collage of screenshots from how the animal is depicted in Animal Crossing. The entry on Great White Shark might be a review of Jaws, the entry on Angelfish could be pet care instructions, the entry on the Atlantic Blue Marlin can be a poem.

A field guide where we are being guided by the fish, it is not a matter of identifying fish, but rather identifying the multitude of ways we think, experience, process, share, explore. A field guide where the field is not the grasslands ahead, but the many fields (physics) visible and invisible that collectively create the worlds we are inhabiting.