Fishy Christmas Gifts...

It being near Christmas and all, I'm having trouble getting my mind around the Great Issues of the Day. Instead, I'm worrying that my sweetie's Christmas present may not arrive in time (okay, okay...so I'm a guy...we have a gene for procrastination!), that Alf the Wonder Dog might eat the tree, that it may or may not snow. I'm also puzzled about why the neighborhood fox has taken to sitting in the aspen grove in the back of my house and staring into my office window; my fear is that he went to some foxish equivalent of a Tony Robbins self-help seminar — "Find the Wolf Within!" — and now he thinks I'm prey.

So, I have a great Christmas gift suggestion for those hard-to-buy-for people on your list. It's a wonderful book, KINGYO: The Artistry of Japanese Goldfish, by Kazuya Takaoka and Sachiko Kuru. In addition to truly stunning graphics and design, the book features a 1939 novella from Kanoko Okamoto titled "A Riot of Goldfish:"

"Mataichi's thoughts about goldfish changed completely as well, though it is not clear whether the change was related to this love. Despite their unreal appearance, he began to see in goldfish the shape of life itself. They lazed about as if no one was watching, swallowed infinity like gulps of air, and blithely brought to bear the real meaning of manliness by swimmingly rearranging life's priorities according to their own convenience. Mataichi was struck with astonishment."

As it happens, I have four goldfish — thoughtlessly named Nemo (an ethereal tancho, or red-cap oranda), Beta (an oranda shishigashira), Lava (a thoroughly Americanized black moor) and Pooh Ye (a calico ranchu, known in Japan as the "king of the goldfish," although I suspect Pooh Ye's lineage is hardly grand since I got him for $6 in a local pet store). They live in a 100-gallon aquarium above $1,000 worth of high-tech German sewage treatment plant, eat designer goldfish food and squished English peas and apparently consider me the external feeding utility. Beta suffers from swim bladder disease, an incurable condition that causes her to spend most of her time upsidedown, which she's adapted to as well as can be expected.

Sometimes Alf the beagle and I sit on the couch in my office and watch the goldfish tank, me pondering Nemo's majestic sweeps through the water with his veil-like fins and Alf no doubt considering how much trouble she would get into if she tipped over the tank and ate the bright colored moving treats. After all, they've got to taste better than the Christmas tree...