October 11, 2014
I’m thinking about water.
Water falls – either river or rain – speak a whole spectrum of the Language of Wet, from soft drip & trickle to pounding slam-hard powerful. I’ve come to believe that all are profoundly healing in the long run – even Tsunami, Hurricane, Cyclone. Sometimes tragically so, painfully so – but real healing is like that.
There are ponds, pools, tiny lakes and great lakes, oceans of deep and old – ever renewing collectors of water. There are aquifers deep and ancient, vast and secret reservoirs of …. memory?
Memory that cools, grounds, sinks and dissolves into something the stars might sing.
I’m thinking about water, and how it feels like a physical and emotional home to me. It is at root a promise of renewal – immerse, let go of air for a moment, alter the pull of gravity, of time; extend the reach and timbre of sound so you feel … lifted, suspended, embraced. Resonant. Dissolved, for a moment.
To rise again into the mantle of gravity, air, task, focal point, verbal articulation, but cleaner, clearer.
Georgian Bay, from the eastern shore at the mouth of Owen Sound
Water stands, too, in those places where the amphibians go and humans do not, where toxicity is dissolved. I think of wetlands as precious, timeless places. Perhaps Chronos lives there, listening.
The sound of water falling – rhythmic & repetitive, whether it’s a drip or a roar – is the soundtrack of our days.
There’s an idea that water is a collector of Story – from us, from flora and fauna, from sky and sun. Horrific stories- catastrophic, miraculous, impossible – but also mundane, incidental, apparently unimportant.
I’m going to paint this. We live in times of deep and profound change, all over the planet. No culture, country, community or person can avoid being confronted by this, and by the deep fears we all experience, collectively and privately, in reaction.
