Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
beloved would return. But then he pictured Timothy taking down
the tree, paying the bills, and sifting clumps out of the cat-litter box,
a chore that had been the source of their most frequent arguments. It
was a mundane life they’d led, but even the mundane was precious
and he wanted it back.
Out of the blue, Dwight laughed. “Tomorrow I have a teeth-
cleaning appointment. I better call and reschedule.”
Now others remembered unpleasant tasks waiting for them at
home: A car that needed a dent taken out of the fender. Dry cleaning
to pick up. Unwashed workout clothes left in a locker at the fitness
center, probably mildewed by now. They focused on trivial matters
they could most easily give up. All else was unbearable to consider.
Their voices dropped to silence again. The campfire flames illumi­
nated their faces from below, giving their eyes dark hollows. I thought
they resembled ghosts, which is ironic for me to say. Many imagine that
the dead have the same spooky look, which is nonsense. In reality—and
by the very fact that I have consciousness, I have a reality—I have no
look other than what I picture myself to be. How strange that I still
don’t know the reason for my death, whereas I seem to know all else.
But your thoughts and emotions after death are no different from
what they were when you were alive, I suppose. You remember only
what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows
you to know.
In the distance, by the jungle’s entertainment center, the shrieks of
children mixed with happy, animated chattering. “Numbah one!
Numbah one!” they chanted, repeating the boast of the ratings for
Darwin’s Fittest. The show had begun, announced with its charac­
teristic theme music and opening. Bass fiddles rubbed and vibrated
in a borborygmus crescendo, lions roared, crocodile jaws snapped,
and fragile-necked cranes honked warning.
Bennie stood up, his eyes stinging from the smoke. He secretly
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