… and so all follows water’s path, from cloud to peak, from heights to valleys, from valleys to the sea; follows through channels that life itself creates, in currents at times quickened at times slowed by degrees of its descent. The selfsame wave that rises, falls; the selfsame lightning separating droplet from the whole, sees droplet join the torrent, follow current with the urging of this gravity-constant hand until, to end a sinuous trackless trail, again it joins the whole.
… and so it follows, the puff of steam to cooling cloud to seeding speck, from soaking sphere to streaking stripe, to freezing mote then fragile flake, from the flurried gale to a bending bough, and wilting arc to sudden splash, the whole suggested from gas to stone and back again like the motion of a single beat of heart, or a season of the heart that welcomes flow then shuns it, melts again then draws all in, as if the water’s palm were the opening and the closing of a hand, the yes and the no, the never and the when.
If you travel from the valley to the mountain’s arm, you follow water’s climb from earth to heaven, and water as it climbs congeals, the structure that lives in its fluid walls revealed, the solid Self that was concealed prevails. That is where the truth of water lives, should you take the time to pause. Take time to pause, it is worth the waste. As every drop is a mirror where you might spy your face, if only you take the time to slow, and more time taken still to still.
The other day I walked on water… but water turned to ice. It’s easier, but then it’s harder, and my feet slipped out from under once or twice. That’s all I had to manage, keeping two paws planted while the truth of water stopped and started, leaving nothing left for standing but for skating, and nothing of the art of skating but to sit. I landed — slick egress from solid water to a more related shore — upon one hand, as though one hand would catch me better than the land, and all the weight of years of living landed with me heavy with a thump.
Which knocked the wind away for the time it took to make that sound, and then the sound was just a gentle thud within the wrist, where weight and Earth’s resistance to consume me soon left something knocking there, some small sense amiss. Still, brushing fragile flakes from legs and waist, I just got on with it. The wind – the wind outside of me – was brisk, was one degree of stillness, was thirty-one small steps below that water’s suppleness, an airy slap against the face without fingers in evidence, but the red of the blow appearing nonetheless. The sting of the slap as loud as though a slap in deed, if not a slap in wind’s intent.
The farthest points of heat retreated first: the smallest fingers, the very tips; then a knuckle here, and there a joint, the hand-tops, and the wrists. And the feeling in the toes that pointed forward up the slopes retreated as if unwilling to be touched, then soon a touch was furthest from their thoughts, and toes at times foremost at times the least in mine. The frost demands your presence, and present you must run to meet it.
The heart, too, like a fragile stone may chill, knowing well that sun or strike of hand defeats it; that seasons turn to soften and deflate it; that stone is imaginary surface, created by those who cannot slow to see inside it. And we that trace a cloud across its surface, follow water’s path from source to finish, where any single moment, seeming nought, is yet the whole and selfsame flowing ocean.
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