"Heading Out"

I felt the now familiar tug, then the pull, then the really powerful pull.  I knew there was a very large fish on the other line.  It gave me; I never know how to tell a female fish from a male fish so the fish will remain an it, a great struggle diving deep pulling the line far out.  As it tired, I was able to pull it closer and closer to the boat I saw it was a huge northern pike. 

Some people fish the lakes up here for pike, I am not one of them.  They smell and they are slimy.  What in the world is that slimy stuff all over them?  I have no trouble with touching a walleye, removing the hook that captured it, but the pike, nope, no way I will do everything in my power to avoid touching them.  I even bought myself a pair of plastic pink pliers, they even had a heart in the middle of them where they came together.  Don’t laugh , it was a good choice they had flat, not pointy, heads at the end, which I thought important so as not to ripe the fishes mouth open when I held them and they wiggled to get free and I was trying to remove the hook that caught them.

A side note to this story, one of those northerns stole my pink pliers, every day we have gone back in hopes that they will surface, for they also floated, but have not seen them yet.  I have even named the island here where I lost them, pink pliers island.  Tons of fun

Anyway back to the big northern I was pulling in.  Brad had caught a 37” northern the day before, it looked like this one might top his record.

As I got the pike closer to the boat, Brad asked if he could help.  Pride took over, I didn’t answer.  I could do it myself I thought.  Land this big one independently. Guess what, I couldn’t.  The pike not only bit me but also broke my line and got away.  I lost the “big one” because of my pride and sense of competition.

Most of you know that I will debate for the independence of an artist and their work until I am blue, what I learned from this experience, but I already knew it, was there are times for collaboration and there are times for independence and it is not a one size fits all.  Our times have changed and we can no longer fight for just what we believe is right, there are tons of others out there who think otherwise; they also think they are right, there is a place for collaboration and a place for independence and I hold the beliefe that politics is a place for collaboration and not dogmatic independence.  I might have caught that pike had I given myself time to accept the help Brad offered and be objective about the whole thing, telling myself you can’t do this by yourself that is obvious.  Perhaps it is time in politics to also take the personal, independence out of it and work with objectivity, reason and reality.

Objectivity, reason and reality is not a one size fits all either, except perhaps when it comes to ones own artwork.

Featured image: "Heading Out" 8x8 Acrylic on Paper. At The Fishing Cabin Series