drawing grapes, i am reminded of fish

One of the first things I did when we got back from holiday (which shall be discussed later) is buy more grapes.  The last batch was fed to the chickens before we left.  The new batch is the more well-known variety that you usually see on supermarket shelves, the long, thin kind.

After plating them up, I decide to go for a coloured pencil instead of my usual broad-tipped pen, and I feel a sense of intricacy and nakedness I didn’t before.  I feel lost for a long time.  I feel somewhat handicapped, almost dependant on that thick line to provide that feeling of chunkiness and folksiness I really like. 

I wonder where this new medium is bringing me and fight the nagging sensation that I simply am not bonding with it.  I start focusing on the shapes and individuality of each grape, each crying out for attention...

It reminds me of something I read from the wonderful book “Eating Animals”, by Jonathan Safran Foer (published in 2009), which is a book about us flesh-eaters.  Foer brings up the fact how conscious the animal world is.  Here is a section about fish:

“Fish build complex nests, form monogamous relationships and use tools.  They recognise on another as individuals (as keep track of who is to be trusted and who is not).  They make decisions individually and monitor social prestige and vie for better positions (to quote from the peer review Fish and Fisheries: they use “Machiavellian strategies of manipulation, punishment and reconciliation”).” 

I look back on the grapes – all looking so similar and yet, each one having its own uniqueness, like the fish.  We have so much to learn from nature.