Water · 2:20am Nov 19th, 2018
I awoke this morning with an echo in my head. Well, two really: one of a trio of songs that my brain fused together in a strange and disconcerting way that made sense at first, only to terrify me later. The other a simple phrase. Just one that has decided to permeate my psyche for the rest of the day, and no amount of distractions, conversations, or stimulant medications has been able to dislodge from my head. Which in some ways makes me wonder if something plucked a heartstring of my soul.
There is something about water.
I think the thought started two days ago in the shower. How we use water as a metaphor for cleansing. For renewal. For rebirth. Human history is fraught with analogies and metaphors and similies about water and... you name it. Water and emotions. Water and colour. Water and life. Water and death. Water and creation.
Water and destruction.
I live by a river. The Columbia River is not as she once was, humans having dammed her up years ago to give ourselves a meagre bit of electricity to light our homes and drive back the darkness. But she's still powerful. She still flows strong. Where she meets the Pacific Ocean, it is the Columbia River that has one of the most dangerous river bar to ocean crossings in the world. Not a mighty river like the Mississippi or the Amazon or the Ganges or the Mekong or the Yangtzee Jiang. The Columbia. Yet despite her proclivity for drowning sailors, wrecking ships, and at one time, flooding with great severity, the Columbia is peaceful to look at. Beautiful to stand by. Quiet. Calm. Flowing.
In many ways, I don't understand it. Humans are primates, or so our classification says. We're not dolphins or seals or otters, though those are frequent sights within the brackish water of the river near my home. But we are primates, better suited for trees and plains than water. Yet by some trick of fate or evolution or god we former tree dwellers now have the freedom to laugh and live and play by and in water.
Christian myth says we were formed of mud, which is part soil, part water. Other myths tell us of a frog or another being that dives deeply into the water that brings up mud from the depths of the sea to bring forth life on land. Still more say we were born of a cosmic egg or from the labours of some goddesses watery womb. And others say that we are born of poetry and song that ran from the mouth of the divine to bring the world into being, as that song plucks along the strings of creation and like ripples on a river its echoes brought forth life. Evolution tells us life first came into being in primordial seas - violent places prone to constant change and shift and chaos that it seems highly unlikely life would ever survive in. But it did. And it thrived. And it died and was reborn anew in that water for billions of years until we fleeting-lived humans came onto the scene less than a cosmic eyeblink ago.
I don't know why I'm writing this. The past two days have seen me horribly sleep deprived, more than a little disturbed by some events in my personal life that are strange and difficult to speak of. But I kind of feel I need to. Because there's something to be said about the hot healing power that comes from standing with my face pressed against the wall of my small shower, letting the water flow through my hair and down my back as the hot tears of a heartbroken girl run down my face.
There is something about water.
I use water in my personal life. Not in the "I need it for the life sustaining need" for it sort of way, but as a metaphor. Emotions flow to me. Emotions surge and wither like waves, tides, or floods. When I have no words to describe what I am feeling, or what another is feeling, I drift back to water. Being remarkably connected to other people means I am tapped into something. And like someone singing a song underwater, or playing an instrument that sends ripples over a flowing river, sometimes I pick out... something from the bubbling chaos. I don't know why. I don't know how. It freaks me out when I do it, and usually freaks my friends out as well if I speak on it too long. But it's also helped me become a far greater heartmender than I ever thought I could be in a short period of time.
I don't know why I liken emotions to water, other than the metaphor comes easily. Anger is a hot spray of scalding steam. Depression is a freezing lake much like the one I fell into and nearly froze from falling into as a child. Happiness bubbles. Fear flash-freezes. Disgust froths like a whitecap rolling in on the tide.
These words work for me. They... make sense to me, even if they make sense to me alone. Because like I said...
There is something about water.
I wish I could remember who said it. I remember at a youth group for the religious community that my parents attended and forced me to attend that they mentioned the Firmament Theory. Somewhere within Christian Mythos -- though I never looked too deeply into its origins, and to this day have a fear to for reasons I can't quite explain -- lies the idea that the Firmament was once a covering of water that wended 'round the Earth to protect it from harm. The man that told me this said it explained how Methuselah could live to be 969 years old before passing on. He also claimed that when god became angry at humanity for sin, he cast down The Firmament, which brought forth the Great Flood. I suppose the fear of looking into something that would cause god to wipe out most of man was enough to frighten my heart away from looking into this too deeply.
Though my love for science and knowledge quickly overrode my childish fears of poking things that should not be poked at. For many things that people told me about god have made me wonder why she is the way she is. Or he is. Or they are.
The Bible says that a Great Flood occurred because of man's sin, and that Noah and his family were the sole survivors. The Kalevala says that Väinämöinen was wounded while attempting a great feat of courage, and that blood from his knee covered the world in a great deluge. Sumerian mythology says the god Ea broke the secrecy of the gods when he learned that they planned to flood the world, and spoke through a reed wall to Utnapishtim to build a boat so that he and many animals may survive. Myths from Mesoamerica talk of a great flood, and the stories vary on the fate of the survivors. Some are blessed. Some are cursed. Some... become more than what they were.
Cantre'r Gwaelod. Atlantis. Lemuria. Lyonesse. Ys.
All cities that were purported to be great in their time and strong in legend, mystery, and lost science. All of them lost to the water. Even the great city of Alexandria couldn't avoid that fate. Her library may have been lost before part of her sank into the Mediterranean, but she too partially sank into the water, making difficult the task of keeping alive her legacy.
There is something about water.
I understand how important water is to life. There's a reason why we call the rush of amniotic fluid that flows from a woman's womb when she starts going into labour her 'water breaking'. There's a reason why the 2nd chakra - the svadhistana - is associated with water, creativity, and sits - at least on a woman - where her reproductive organs sit and where she carries her child when pregnant. We say that creativity 'flows'. And that when we can't create, can't write, can't think, can't sing... we are in a 'dry spell.' So much about how important it is to have water.
I don't know much about these things. I don't know why the human race has this fascination with water, outside of the obvious biological imperative we have to continue to take in water as is our daily need. I'm not sure why this strange substance H2O carries with it so many beautiful life giving properties in... what is required in exacting amounts. Too little: we wither and die. Too much: our cells burst and we die. Everything in balance and moderation.
I was somewhat hoping that writing this out would give me a bit of calm. Something to counter the disquiet of the past few days. But all I've done really so far is silence the echo that's been ringing inside me all morning. While that helps, it still hasn't completely resolved my questions. Nor has it stopped me from keenly feeling the strange ripples that come from others when the strings of our soul are plucked.
I don't know why that happens. I don't know if the universe was sung into being with a song or simply is because physics demanded it for reasons that we don't yet have explanation for. All I know is...
There is something about water.
Water is strange. It has properties and forms that don't happen anywhere else in nature, and it is a fundamental part of life on this planet. It would make sense, then, that we would live near it, and that we would obsess with it.
If we need good, we can go to the water. If we need to farm, we can go to the water. If we need to bathe, the water is there. If we need to cool or to warm, we can use water. Water is impressive for all that it does for us.
It's also impressive for what it does to us. Flooding, drowning, erasing. The saying goes that fire washes away the sin, but if you've ever been in a flood you know that's not true. Fire always leaves something behind, even if it's charcoaled ash and dust. Water on the other hand takes the remains with it. You can go to a flood plain and find no evidence of what was there before. It's really rather interesting.
My relationship with water has been... A tough one. I live not too far from the Puget Sound and as a result I get an infamously large amount of rain. Growing up I lived in an apartment with a cracked foundation. I'm sure you can do the math for what happened to it. It happened three times before we moved. Despite that, I've always loved the rain. It's rhythmic and quiet and the aftermath is amazing.
I've noticed your tendency to use water to describe emotions. I've always been partial to colors and temperatures myself. Red hot anger, cold sadness. Things like that. I don't use that sort of metaphor too much though. I'm no poet, despite my posturing.
I'm sorry that these last few days have been rough. For what it is worth, you have made some conversations I've had this past week a lot more bearable, and I appreciate you, both for that and as a friend.
Water is quite the thing.
If not for the bent shape of the molecule - and the polar qualities that result from it - water would be more like carbon dioxide; a gas at normal temperatures, and liquid only at very high pressures.
Water is an incredible solvent. All of the molecules necessary for life are soluble in it - to varying degrees, of course. One could even say that's an expression of the puddle theory; a puddle marvels that the hole it inhabits is perfectly shaped to hold it. Could be that water is just one of the most common liquids in the universe, and thus life must be made of compounds soluble in it. Indeed, water itself is the most common molecule we find in space.
Water has an incredibly high specific heat. You add heat to it, and its temperature changes only a little. This has massively shaped earth's biome, and the life that fills it. London is at the same latitude as Moscow, yet much warmer. Why? Water holds heat, and keeps London's temperature much steadier between winter/summer. As Venus spun so slowly, the water on the day side boiled, and was dissociated by solar wind, the hydrogen being blasted into space. Once the water was gone, there was nothing left to keep Venus from roasting, and all the carbonate rocks below roasted off their carbon dioxide and turned Venus into a hothouse.
Water expands as it freezes. This is incredibly rare. Without this trait, oceans would freeze from the bottom up, and all the worldwide oceans, lakes, and rivers would be three feet deep. Say goodbye to pretty much all fish and aquatic life; which makes up most of the life on the planet.
Water is universally important. Any planet with life is almost certain to be a water planet. I'm rambling now.
Blood is water, birth is water, tears are water, thoughts and memories are water that flow and ebb and wash over us in ways that don't regard our desires. Water is our beginning, and our living, and our end. Water changes the landscape and there is remarkably little we can do to stop it.
It's little wonder that you see everything as water.
I feel like this deserves some more profound comment, but unfortunately I don't seem to be thinking of one at present.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts/feelings/intuitions/perceptions here, though.
Ugh, don't talk to me about water right now. Between weather damage to my house and leaky plumbing, I've had my fill of water for the moment.
Water is a jerk.
... As always, you're much more thoughtful than I would ever be or think of being.
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I spend a lot of my life in my head. I don't know that it makes me more thoughtful, but it does mean I end up thinking a lot about a lot of things. Hap said I should start compiling things together, and if I remember to do it, maybe someone will find it neat! I've just been finding that I maybe should stop hiding behind my quiet anxiety that I'm bothering people by talking and just write about it.
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You should!
I always enjoy these little glimpses inside your head and getting to see your heart shine.
9.8/10 Too much water. IGN
I hate myself
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Shoot, I'd read it. At least, I would if it's like stuff like this. Completely out of left field, a little odd, but still really interesting to read.
Reading things about how other people think is interesting to me. Adds perspective to things (even if I have no idea what that actually means). But I guess it's a mix of self-serving reasons, and reaching out kind of reasons that make it interesting to check out from time to time.
1. Self-serving: I have difficulty with putting together words to explain... well, anything. It varies. I can't even do it for myself unless I've had lots of time and inspiration from other sources, so I kind of pull from everything else. Huh, maybe that's why I've had miscommunications before. Using words/ideas offered by others to explain myself, but not always for the reasons they think. Some implications from ideas apply sometimes, and sometimes they don't, and it's usually in retrospect that I realize if some things don't apply to me or not. Then again, the way I think is sometimes sporadic, so some things stop being applicable if there's a change.
But that's just a guess.
2. Reaching out: I do a lot of self-analysis out of necessity, so I guess subsequently, I also get curious as to how other people think. Same goes for physics, or did (how'd I lose THAT spark?). Don't think I naturally cared when I was young, but hey, the wonders of amphetamine when you have ADD, ey?
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I spend an unhealthy amount of time in my head as a means of escapism. Why bother worrying about things that you can't really change, or get super worked up about the impending doom that is the future, when you can do crossovers in your head, or stick yourself into a fiction scene and try to figure how you would do things then (making yourself badass #1 out of habit).
Thought about how- okay, guess I didn't really go into philosophical depth when I read your piece on how water symbolizes emotions. Guess I'm just copy-pasting the obvious that emotions can be described in many ways. And awkwardly throwing in my irrelevant opinion that I've felt extremely numb for years.
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Heartshine
Smol green pega that writes lots of words about ponies.
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Oh hey, 4/1 is my birthday. Neat.