Water

I remember reading somewhere that water stores the energy of the environment, of feelings and happenings. Every reason for this to be true.

There is something about water, described in many ways, for many purposes, the absence
presence
purity
distance
uses
beauty

being the largest percentage of whatever makes up a human – being also the largest percentage of surface earth.

The cleverly caught image in a drop of rain water hanging on the edge of a leaf. Look at this post I came across on instagram.
At the exact moment that I am prepping this blog post for upload, I find an image so perfect, uploaded around the same time. Thank you macrovortex for sharing your gorgeous work. (This account has some fabulous images.)

Clear and studio perfect reflection of colours in a forest pool. Suddenly I am unclear now of whether you see colours in a reflection. I know you can’t see colours in shadows.

Once. In an ancient and broken down fort from more than a few hundred years ago, a friend and I stumbled upon the remains of a broken cannon in the still, stagnant, green scummy water, of a small below ground step well. The original discovery of this fort appears not to have mattered to anyone since. Overtaken by jungle, with a rusty, peeling old tin signboard that gave ownership and responsibility to a lost department. This fort and the cannons laying about in water, centuries old, stored things you could feel.

A fat cactus knows water.

Does anyone still make paper boats when it rains?

Floating them in the rivers raging by the roadside, in a great rush to get to who knows where?

In Manali, I sat by a loud and rowdy river one afternoon, to eat my ham sandwich. I could only hear the river. The noise a river can make at full pelt cannot be heard in the head unless you have actually heard it. I sat and I ate. And I knew I had the company of this river.

Do rivers like sandwiches? I’m careful. I shared the last piece, it was quite big, with the river. I flung it high and into the roaring wild and it disappeared.

A bottle of beer or a can of apple juice tucked in between rocks to cool in a stream. One tucked in not so safely floats away. Gone. Sitting on a rock, trousers folded up, feet in the water. Those feet look and feel different. Traveller feet in traveller water, fresh from adventures involving mountains and rocks and rounded pebbles. Fallen trees. Fish. Birds. Wild drinkers. Of the creature kind. Whirlpools.

Human beings that pray as they cross narrow rope bridges across whitewater. These are my domesticated feet and they will return to shower and soap, socks and shoes.

Water in a glass with a cube of ice in it. Hold, meditatively, cooling your palms and your forehead. Drink like a blessing. Water from a ghara, an earthen pot, kept cool under a wet sack, at a dhaba, or by the tents of a nomadic tribal community.

Water in a bottle in the car. For me and my domesticated dog who travels with my domesticated feet.

One day she went to the beach with me and stared at the sea. Her first life experience of this. She’s a great starer and meditator. When she likes what she sees and feels, she stops and sits.

I stop and sit in her skin for a bit. I borrow what I can of her eyes and ears and nose. This dog at beach consciousness I carry in my cells.

Once there were other dogs at beaches who sat with me under beach umbrellas, who walked and stumbled through whipping rainy breeze and stood on their hind legs to be picked up and carried. Big sea, small dog.

Water.
In the electric kettle.
For coffee.

(From my Leaf and Lighthouse series of posts.)