Everyday Canvas

Water, Water Everywhere

Prompt: What do you think of water? What are the impressions it brings to your mind?

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Water is like the drama masks with two faces, a laughing and a crying one.

On the happy side, water is the constructive creator of life. Water means energy, as it constitutes 71% of the earth’s surface and 65% of the human body and other animals. It is for all life to use, drink, swim in, or bathe.

It is the sap rising in plants, and it looks so magical, as it shimmers like a fairy’s wand when viewed from space. Down on our planet, water sometimes acts as a mirror, which in prehistory, probably made people and other living things see their own images for the first time.

Many religions use water for cleansing rituals to restore or maintain a state of purity. For example, the lotus-stream of the Buddha (Boddhisattva) rises up from the waters of the soul, in the same way the spirit, illumined by knowledge, frees itself from passive existence. In China, water is believed to be the source of all life and the den of the dragon. Aphrodite is born from the sea. In India, the sacred River Ganges embodies the water of life for the Hindus, for it is the river that flows into the realm of Nirvana. As to water’s cryptic uses, seers use sometimes a bowl of water for seeing the truth and the future. Although in mere science water is only an inorganic compound through which chemical processes happen, the holistic view sees it as the connection of all life and holds it in special respect.

Water is dynamic. While the sun gives life-sustaining energy, water makes it function with its motion. When water becomes motionless, it stagnates.

On the negative side, water can be unstable and unpredictable. Sometimes, this restlessness of it causes floods, tsunamis, and death and destruction. Left to human carelessness, water can also spread illness and disease. It is the River Styx in Dante's Inferno, and the marsh and other four rivers in Hades of Greeks, sometimes called the Underworld, and other times, Hell.

I consider water as having a quality of consciousness with integrity, independence, mercy, cohesion, passion, but when crossed and its boundaries not respected, as having tremendous rage that can kill and destroy. I love the ocean, lakes, ponds, rivers, rain, and even our pool in the back of the house, not to wade or swim in but to watch and ponder about how the water helps our brains to think, to play hooky from our daily worries.

Water brings to my mind Handel’s Water Music, Water Lilies by Claude Monet, Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain, and many other works of art that sing to the human soul. As such, here is a poem by Mary Oliver.

At Blackwater Pond

At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have
settled
after a night of rain.
I dip my cupped hands. I drink
a long time. It tastes
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
oh what is that beautiful thing
that just happened?

And I’ll drink to that, a fresh, cool cup of pure spring water.