Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
ror, he swallowed as well. They looked like prisoners on a chain
gang, he thought. I should tell them we are in the same boat and
should join forces. He walked closer and then caught himself. What
was he doing? This is TV, you dope, it isn’t real. His glazed eyes re­
turned to the screen, and a minute later, his logic flipped once again,
so that he was operating under the reasoning of dreams. It’s a reality
show, he told himself, and that means it is real. The people are real,
the boats are real, the holes are real. The only thing that separates
their reality from mine is a piece of glass. If I can just get them to see
past the screen....He threw his arms in the air, and this sudden ac­
tion was enough to jolt him out of the delusion. Stop thinking crazy,
he chastised himself. But like a person pulled irresistibly toward
sleep, he gradually fell back into this semi-dream state. He sent a
message with the power of his mind. Look at me, please. God damn
it, look at me! I’m stuck in the jungle, too. Look at me!
I knew how he felt. Since my death, I have been overwhelmed with
a frustration that alternates with despair. Imagine it: your con­
sciousness separated from others by an invisible barrier that was
erected in the blink of an eye. And now the eye no longer blinks. It
never will again.
In Bennie’s porous mind, he was now advising the teams: Tear up
your clothes, mix them with mud to make a ball—no, no, not the
coconut hair, forget that, and don’t pick up the thatch, it’s not going
to bunch up tight enough. You idiots! I’m the leader! You’re sup­
posed to listen to me.... His disobedient team had just put their
boat into the water, when a news crawl floated along the bottom of
the screen: “Special report: More on the mystery of the eleven miss­
ing tourists in Myanmar.”
Bennie was amazed that other tourists were in their same predica­
ment. The only difference: eleven instead of twelve. Wait a second.
We are only eleven. He blinked hard to push out the brain skitter.
Was it merely wishful thinking? A hallucinatory manifestation? He
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