FIRST, LET'S TALK ABOUT WATER

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and the darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moves upon the face of the waters...
Genesis 1:1

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.
- Loren Eisley
The Immense Journey

Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.
- Robert Frost
Directive


I remember watching a magician's performance on tv where the magic tricks proved to be ultimately engaging due to the delightful use by the magician of life's major elements - air, fire, and water - as magical themes. Of the three elements, his acts with water were most popular with the audience for reasons I considered as obvious: air, being an invisible element, deprived the spectators of a logical connection between subject and tricks; and, fire, being a symbolically evil element, deprived the spectators of a more appreciative connection between subject and tricks. Water, on the other hand, is both visually and spiritually accessible and alluring, even to kids, that all movements, all boosts, emanating from and between subject and tricks were pursued by a collective scrutiny that was eventually captivated.

The magician's watery tricks left no room to a cynic's prying estimation; they were not only air tight - (hah, now that's unseen!), they were also crudely entertaining. Consider: first, the magician was shown holding a pigeon; then he clasped his hands together as in a prayer, confining the pigeon and holding it from view; then slowly he released the clasp and each hand was magically cupping a spurting water that arced like little fountains, the spurts taking center stage in lieu of a disintegrated, and probably disgruntled, bird; and finally he juggled the spurts between his hands as if saying, look ma no spill, no mess - and who knows, there were probably no wet magician's hands even, for crying out loud!

The magician's tricks need not be seen nor told for us to finally regard the true potency of Loren Eisley's statement: water is magical. And since I thirst for philosophy as much as I do for water, I can even toast a glassfull in its own flowing honor and in a fluid fashion declare in a flash: water, holy or not, spells power!

In M. Night Shyamalan's movie Unbreakable, Bruce Willis' character had superhuman qualities burdened by his own superman's kryptonite: water. He never got sick for a prolonged period of time and was sensationally able to carry tons of objects many times his body weight, but a good amount of water poured over his body converted his superhuman energy into the same muscle potential of a rag doll. In one climactic scene, he was pursuing a criminal with valiant intensity until he fell into a swimming pool that abruptly coursed his saviour persona to a sub-zero, sub-hero level.

Water, odorless and colorless, is not sock-less when the issue is saving mankind. But parenthetically, like in the case of the fictional Bruce Willis character, it can kill, too. I know the feeling. I am strong, myself, and honestly athletic. But water, specifically rainwater, is my own personal waterloo, (or should I say rainwaterloo?)

Ahhhh, rainwater. I remember my childhood moments where my version of "Give me a piece of earth and I shall move the world" pointed to the small radius that was the direct vertical hit of rainwater sploshing from the downspout. Nobody, but nobody, could have found courage to stay on that spot when it rained hard; the place was my castle, the rainwater from the downspout was my bath-servant.

That was then, this is now. It must have been karma that slowed my resistance and nature was currently telling me, "Son, your time is up, your throne is up - for grabs. Somebody has got to be the new rain king." And so now, this is what afflicts me. I am plagued with an allergy to rainwater and the bodily reaction to getting slightly rain-soaked is swift and severe. Did I spell pneumonia correctly?

But rainwater is not all bad for me. My sense of hearing loves it; the sound of rain lulls my insomniac head to sleep, there's no need to count sheep. Rain saves me a good amount of time; through the clouds' cooperation there is no need to water my plants, my ferns, the trees, the greens, and even the wheels, too.

Maybe I should consider water as my pharmacopoeia, my poison on one side, my antidote on another, and bring my attitude towards it to a whole new level of respect.
'And on that note', (the way lp fondly states as attribute to parting words), let me repeat without claiming as mine what my high school teacher once said in our science class: that the amount of earth's water is the same for all time, taking into consideration the process of evaporation and condensation and that the clouds and the atmosphere from part of this planet. That lesson was way too cool. It could mean, as I now realize and scream my own eureka! - I may have bathed in the recycled sweat of the puissant Cleopatra while you may have done the bottoms up on the recycled piss of the deplorable Atilla the Hun. Kampai!