Post 41: Fishing for Space

originally created as Column Forty-one, April 2007

As I walked past the outdoor stands in the neighborhood shopping mall, just before Passover, I was attracted to the bright colors of several vodka bottles. Inside each bottle was a mini-aquarium containing water (not vodka) and a single fish. The salesperson was selling each bottle+fish+fishfood as a gift.

A few people walked by to inquire what she was selling. Most of them exclaimed "poor thing - he's all alone". The vendor explained that if the fish had a partner they would probably kill each other and that he can live for about four years in such a bottle. Furthermore, if you would put that fish in a huge aquarium, he would look for a quiet and intimate corner.

I didn't see anyone buying the fish, but many continued to protest at the fish's apparent bachelorhood. I found it amusing that despite the fact that the vendor explained that the fish was content being alone, people insisted that he was lonely. Even fish aren't allowed to be alone in Israel? Even being a single fish is socially unacceptable? I imagine that if people weren't so busy, they would quickly come up to the vendor with suggestions of eligible other fish to fix him up with, and if he would reject their candidacy, they would probably console their own fish and say "don't worry, there are plenty more in the sea".

But seriously, this is the continuous obsession with having to have a partner or live with someone to be part of society. In a recent popular tv show, a single woman and her fiance call off the marriage. The camera shows the ex-bride crying hysterically in her living room. Her friend tries to console her. She says she is crying because she wanted her identity card to read "divorced". A comedy, yes, but sadly true.

It seems to be more acceptable to be divorced than to be single. Even the series "Sex and the City", that tried to glorify, or at least justify single women being single, ended the series with EACH one of the four single girls being married or at least having a serious, committed boyfriend. As the series did not continue, we do not know what happened to the characters and whether their relationships did succeed in the long-term, or not. However, the writers seemed to have given in, despite the non-conventional and daring manner in which the series was portrayed to the socially conservative notion of women living "happily ever after" with the men of their dreams.

And so here it was...a beautiful fish in a beautiful home happily sporting its colors and decorative environment to the passersby. But that was not enough. This single fish was not accepted by it society, not even on the eve of Passover!

This writer does NOT live with a boyfriend or husband in Israel,, but she is not lonely!