It's back to the work week. Time for a coherent, non-schizophrenic post.
This weekend I had a really interesting conversation about one of my favorite things in the whole world: water. Food is also up there, but I spend plenty of posts ranting about restaurants, so here it is, the other pillar of my life.
I'm not talking about drinking water, I'm talking about being in the water. Any form of immersion, floating, swimming, diving. Ocean, pool, water park, whatever. During high school I used to blog about the hot tub on my deck, which I spent thousands of dollars on to get fixed and renovated. It wasn't, as people guessed, so I could host pool parties or have a place to bring girls (although both of those things did actually happen). It was more because I could spend hours lying in there, listening to the sound of bubbling water, jet stream currents erasing all traces of conscious thought.
Another place I spent a lot of time as a kid was in the bathtub, where I would let the water from the showerhead wash over me. I had a hard time relaxing and the time was meditative, my mind was always on the move, and just for a few minutes, I lost touch with reality and was able to zone out.
Then there's the vivid flash memories I have of specific moments, like the time I was lying under the vast nighttime sky with twinkling stars, floating in a pool somewhere in Florida right along the ocean, a dolphin statue sending a curving jet of water overhead, the sound of conversation from the few other people there a dim hum.
Or the time I was in Atlantic City at the Tropicana, in an upgraded suite room that had its own Jacuzzi tub, with multiple jets spraying water from all directions, and water from multiple shower heads raining in from above.
Or the time I was on the beach nearby, a thunderstorm approaching, the surf growing unruly and the tide crashing into the sandy shore as the sky darkened. I wanted to run out into the foamy currents and swim butterfly in between the waves. There was a feeling visceral and empowering, a feeling of being in motion with nature and part of something larger than life itself.
Even in the last example, the common thread for all these memories was a sense of inner peace, harmony, and emptiness, a feeling that's all but impossible to find in New York.
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Melville-- "But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand — miles of them — leagues. Inlanders, all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues — north, east, south, or west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them hither?
ReplyDeleteOnce more. Say you are in the country, in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries — stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be a-thirst in the great American desert, try that experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor.
Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded forever."