Between Roger Stone and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the eyes tell the story.

The first time I ever saw a fluke, my then husband and I were fishing off Mystic Point.

According to AnimalSake, the fluke is a member of the flatfishes. As these types lie low on their side at the bottom of the oceans, they express a freakish feature: both of their eyes appear on the left sides of their heads!

Such an eye position serves them critically. Found in the Atlantic, low on its undersurface, they blend with their environment where a mottled camouflage helps them to take their prey by surprise and hunt it down.

Fluke fish   (photo credit: AnimalSake)

Never having so much as held a fishing pole, I took to this new pastime with gusto at my tender age of 34, finding the whole enterprise juvenating and the light, flaking meat delightfully mild.

But, though decades have passed since both my last fishing expedition and the marriage which began and ended it, the eyes of the fluke are these to which I now return.

It would seem that all life forms at any proximity to the grande unraveling in Washington, D.C. would do well to have eyes in the backs of their heads. No one has a clue what the leader of the free world will say or do next, only that all within range will be both duly shocked and awed by his baffling incongruity with law, order and any form of conventional governance.

Speaking of incongruity, take Press Secretary Sanders. I watch her keenly, every time she appears at podium to face the queries. Facial asymmetries notwithstanding, there is something about her eyes which sends me back to Mystic Point.

I’m in the boat, dropped anchor. Water laps quietly, on all sides. The tug on the line is almost imperceptible and, with a silent woosh, up comes the catch, flapping its tailfin with every muscle on a smooth, flat back. And, staring up at me, from some other dimensional realm, are its two, side eyes.

Why do Sanders’ eyes seem to fight for their presence on her face? The forehead muscles alternately pull her left orb upward, momentarily boggling and bulging it while the right eye, intent on maintaining some form of stasis, cannot control an involuntary reaction to the left. And so, they both lurch and roll in their sockets, like a couple mismatched  lychee nuts. What does this tell us about the war going on between her brain hemispheres, for God’s sake? Can anybody say “cognitive dissonance”?

As for Roger Stone, I am inclined to think that he keeps his Cliff Notes under his eyelids; can the man verbalize a thought without closing and holding both, completely? Watch him too intently, with your own hopefully healthy set, and your chest might notice a faint atrial flutter. Never have I witnessed such anti-rhythm since Glen Close in “Fatal Attraction” sat, catatonic, unblinking, flicking the lamp switch on and off with the erratic tempo of her own madness.

It’s winter, in the Great Lakes. Ice fishing is less common on Lake Erie and there are no fluke to be found in these parts, even in summer. Still, I’d love a fresh one, fried or steamed, to warm the cockles of my troubled heart this day. Tomorrow will come, soon enough. Best to be grateful for whatever clear vision it may bring. The eyes of the Lord are upon only the righteous; one wonders how many times, in recent days, God Almighty has had to turn in divine disgust, and look away.

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© 12/19/18 Ruth Ann Scanzillo.    Thank you for respecting original material.

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