markings

 

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A field of water betrays a spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky. On land only the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled by the wind. I see where the breeze dashes across it by the streaks or flakes of light. 

It is remarkable that we can look down on its surface. We shall, perhaps, look down thus on the surface of air at length, and mark where a still subtler spirit sweeps over it. 


—Henry David Thoreau 
Walden, the pond

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life before death

.

The capital-T Truth is about life before death.

It is about the real value of a real education, 
which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, 
and everything to do with simple awareness; 

awareness of what is so real and essential, 
so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we 
have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

"This is water."
"This is water."

It is unimaginably hard to do this, 
to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and 
day out.

 

—David Foster Wallace

. 

body of water

 

.

Water does not resist. Water flows. 
When you plunge your hand into it, 
all you feel is a caress.  

Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. 
But water always goes where it wants to go, 
and nothing in the end can stand against it.  

Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. 
Remember that, my child. 
Remember you are half water.  

If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. 
Water does.

—Margaret Atwood

.

recipe

 

.

Prep Time  
2 min 

Total Time  

19 hrs 6 min 

Servings  

1

Ingredients  

1 glass
some water

Directions   

1. fill glass with water. 

2. don't drink anything for 19 hours. 

3. drink the water.  

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blood, sea

 

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In 1976, the Italian writer Italo Calvino published a famous collection of poetic prose, t zero. The story “Blood, Sea" recounts a sequence of events narrated from the first-person perspective of a blood cell, alternating with a story about human protagonists, told in the conventional perspective of the third person. 

In the story, among a lot of other astonishing relations, Calvino explores the fact that the water of the earth’s oceans shows a mineral composition which strikingly resembles that of our body fluids. The blood plasma is the sea in which life once began. This ocean still fills us, as it fills all other lifeforms. 

Calvino imagined a narrative told by a blood cell, a cell which is suspended in this primordial ocean within our bodies. He told a story from the perspective of life itself, or rather from the perspective of the life-giving ability of the primal fluid and its invitation to make intimate connections. 

He spoke from the standpoint of an outside which is also an inside. Calvino invented “Biopoetics” avant la lettre. He envisioned a first-person account of what is not human through our shared qualities, through our participation in a vast web of transformations. 

For Calvino, the poet, it was only evident that we are able to make statements about this network of changes and exchanges because we are a part of it, and we are concerned by it, as we are by our own fate. 

Poetic creativity is the power to know something through intimate participation. […] Calvino is a poet, and as such he knows about the fact that true novelty in this world, and also true experiences of connection, only arise through the exchange, the breakdown and recreation of what is real.

—Andreas Weber

Biopoetics

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the nature of water

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Thence it was that Thales, of Miletus, and Hesiod concluded that Water was the beginning of all things, and said it was the first of all the Elements, and the most potent, and that because it hath the mastery over all the rest. For, as Pliny saith, Waters swallow up the Earth, extinguish flames, ascend on high, and by the stretching forth of the clouds, challenge the Heaven for their own; the same falling becomes the cause of all things that grow in the Earth. Very many are the wonders that are done by Waters, according to the writings of Pliny, Solinus, and many other historians of the wonderful virtue whereof.

—Agrippa
The Philosophy of Natural Magic
CHAPTER VI. Of the Wonderful Natures of Water, Air and Winds

.

wait - what ?

.

siesta hour

 

.

  

to bury our

face

in you, and

our hair, and

the soul!

When we're thirsty

we glimpse you

like

a mine or a mountain

of feasts,

but

among our longings and our teeth

you change

simply

into cool light

that slips in turn into

spring water

that touched us once

singing.

And that is why
you don't weigh us down,
in the siesta hour
that's like an oven,
you don't weigh us down,
you just
go by
and your heart, some cold ember,
turns itself into a single
drop of water.

—Pablo Neruda

.

this is a photograph of me

   

.

It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion

but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.

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fluent

 

 

.

I would love to live
Like a river flows

Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.

—John O'Donohue 

.
 Gregory Colbert

.

two rivers

   

 

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Thy summer voice, Musketaquit,
Repeats the music of the rain;
But sweeter rivers pulsing flit
Through thee, as thou through the Concord Plain. 

Thou in thy narrow banks art pent: 

The stream I love unbounded goes 

Through flood and sea and firmament; 

Through light, through life, it forward flows. 

I see the inundation sweet, 

I hear the spending of the steam 

Through years, through men, through Nature fleet, 

Through love and thought, through power and dream. 

Musketaquit, a goblin strong, 

Of shard and flint makes jewels gay; 

They lose their grief who hear his song, 

And where he winds is the day of day. 

So forth and brighter fares my stream,-- 

Who drink it shall not thirst again; 

No darkness taints its equal gleam, 

And ages drop in it like rain.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson 

.

look at the Water of the water

 

.

Day and night there is movement of foam on the Sea.
You see the foam, but not the Sea. Amazing!
We are dashing against each other like boats:
our eyes are darkened though we're on clear water. 

O you who've gone to sleep in the body's boat,
you've seen the water,
but look at the Water of the water.
The water has a Water that is driving it;
the spirit has a Spirit that is calling it. 


—Rumi

. 

listen

 

 

.

at the bottom of the ocean
is a layer of water that has
never moved

—Anne Carson

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endless nights of rain

 

.

So it rains, 
and time, that hourly girl, 
tilts up her mold, 
filling with mercury.

While you sit 
examining your hands 
as though water 
could change the world.

That’s right, 
it’s the pure, brief space 
that is yours: 
nothing fills it. 


—Mary Ruefle
in The Adamant

.

 

resonance

.

All fluid activities are in resonance. They mutualize and inform each other. The fluid inside this biosphere called Earth and the fluids of our bodies are in constant rapport.


—Emilie Conrad

.  .  .

The human skin is an artificial boundary: the world wanders into it, and the self wanders out of it, traffic is two-way and constant.

—Bernard Wolfe

.

wait - what ?

Hu Jun Di

.

the sea is silent

 

Sophie Bray, Oceanic: Surface. 
Pencil on paper, 50 x 66 cm, 2010.

.

The sea has no renewal, no forgetting,

no variety of death,

is silent with the silence of a single note.

—Basil Bunting

Villon 

.

love, if you love me

 

.

All night the sound had 
come back again, 
and again falls 
this quiet, persistent rain. 

What am I to myself 
that must be remembered, 
insisted upon 
so often? Is it 

that never the ease, 
even the hardness, 
of rain falling 
will have for me 

something other than this, 
something not so insistent— 
am I to be locked in this 
final uneasiness. 

Love, if you love me, 
lie next to me. 
Be for me, like rain, 
the getting out 

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.  
Be wet 
with a decent happiness.

—Robert Creeley

.

 

credo

 

.

You say wind is only wind

and carries nothing nervous

in its teeth. I do not believe it.

I have seen leaves desist from moving

although the branches move,

and I believe a cyclone has secrets

the weather is ignorant of. I believe

in the violence of not knowing.

I’ve seen a river lose its course

and join itself again, watched it court

a stream and coax the stream

into its current, and I have seen rivers,

not unlike you, that failed to find

their way back. I believe in the rapport

between water and sand, the advent

from mirror to face. I believe in rain

to cover what mourns, in hail that revives

and sleet that erodes, believe

whatever falls is a figure of rain,

and now I believe in torrents that take

everything down with them.

The sky calls it quits, or so I believe,

when air, or earth, or air has had

enough. I believe in disquiet,

the pressure it plies, believe a cloud

to govern the limits of night. I say I,

but little is left to say it, much less

mean it—and yet I do. Let there be

no mistake. I do not believe

things are reborn in fire.

I believe they’re consumed by fire,

and the fire has a life of its own.

—Andrew Zawacki

.

 

the water diviner

 

  

.

Late, I have come to a parched land   

doubting my gift, if gift I have,   

the inspiration of water 

spilt, swallowed in the sand. 

To hear once more water trickle,   

to stand in a stretch of silence 

the divining pen twisting in the hand:   

sign of depths alluvial. 

Water owns no permanent shape,   

sags, is most itself descending; 

now, under the shadow of the idol,   

dry mouth and dry landscape. 

No rain falls with a refreshing sound   

to settle tubular in a well, 

elliptical in a bowl. No grape 

lusciously moulds it round. 

Clouds have no constant resemblance   

to anything, blown by a hot wind,   

flying mirages; the blue background,   

light constructions of chance. 

To hold back chaos I transformed   

amorphous mass—and fire and cloud—   

so that the agèd gods might dance   

and golden structures form. 

I should have built, plain brick on brick,   

a water tower. The sun flies on 

arid wastes, barren hells too warm   

and me with a hazel stick! 

Rivulets vanished in the dust 

long ago, great compositions 

vaporized, salt on the tongue so thick   

that drinking, still I thirst. 

Repeated desert, recurring drought,   

sometimes hearing water trickle,   

sometimes not, I, by doubting first,   

believe; believing, doubt.

 

 

—Dannie Abse

.

fellow creatures

.

At present, I am mainly observing the physical motion 
of mountains, water, trees and flowers. 

One is everywhere reminded of similar movements in 
the human body, 

of similar impulses of joy and suffering in plants.

—Egon Schiele

.  .  .

Look for light

Listen for inspiration on the wind 

Let water cleanse your soul 

Set yourself on a firm foundation 

Serve as the plants 

Do not offend your fellow creatures 

Live in harmony with all creations

―Anasazi Foundation
The Seven Paths of the Anasazi Way: 
The Making of a Forward Walking

.

sacred

.

 

Though no two snowflakes are alike, they commonly share what appears to be a three dimensional cube at the center, which is a true testament toward sacred geometry in nature. 

When you also consider the fact that snowflakes are formed from water and that water is essential to life ... [...]

—Unknown 

.

imagine

 

.

The philosopher Schopenhauer suggested that 

imagining we have free will is:

"exactly as if water spoke to itself:  

‘I can make waves 
(yes! in the sea during a storm), 

I can rush downhill 
(yes! in the river bed), 

I can plunge down foaming and gushing 
(yes! in the waterfall), 

I can rise freely as a stream of water into the air 
(yes! in the fountain), 

I can, finally, boil away and disappear 
(yes! at a certain temperature); 

but I am doing none of these things now, 

and am of my own accord remaining quiet 
and clear water in the reflecting pond.’”

. 

voice of the rain

  

 .

And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower,
Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:

I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,
Eternal, I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,
Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form'd,
altogether changed, and yet the same,
I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,

And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;
And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin,
and make pure and beautify it;
(For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfillment, wandering,
Reck'd or unreck', duly with love returns.)


—Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass

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