Another drowning story
π π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π
June 2022
I took pebbles from the shore, its mouth of which opened no more than a few bodies wide, and felt each one of their crevices.Β One, glassy in its mirroring of the sky; perhaps even punctured by the horizon. Two, jagged and lost from the bricklayerβs hand β almost. Three, visible at the edges and completely dry. Each wave washes a little further. When seen yet untouched against a heaping of a thousand wet stones it seems to be the loneliest fate. To think of a thing too pristine for this world is to either deem the universe unholy or us a forgetful people.Β
Our cupped hands envelop water in practice and whole earths in theory. The human hand has transacted with this universe for millennia, often takings. All this debt is yet to be accounted for. I take this rock to skip, flat and facile,Β and it sinks into depths. For it, what was deepest was what was there in the beginning; this is just birthright. (For humans reach only for the highest, far from the soil that had made them, nursed them, held their mirth, carried their ends.) The act of submergence often takes more courage than assumed. For centuries this was deemed a holy act. No different is the piling of rock on rock from the ritual of reaching the higher. No different is the assemblage of rock on human skin, a conflagration, a pyre. No different is the nailing of man, his hand on hand and ours on the crossing, on penitent wood. No different did we pour water on boards for secrets. No different did we drown our children, even if just for a second, to save them from some end.
The remaining rocks sink in the puddle of my hands. They are betrothed to the river in front of me, underneath the bridge, underneath the overpass (where man after man has thrown himself to each million that pass him safely), underneath centuries of vapor and gas and memory. I think, very briefly, that I am an intervention. A natural rhythm and song to the world where a stone sinks to the bottom and is corroded and becomes the banks that then carry another stone. A natural wanting to throw things into the depths, substitution for our seeing. Iβm testing how everything feels when submerged deeply, because I also want it, because I am myself when I am most enveloped by the world.
Itβs facile to carry them; an act of irreverence to the natural order of things. I put them back, perfect for skipping, their weightlessness almost transfers.
Wave after wave. Two hands tug at my back, this time with more force than gentleness. I had almost been swept. Another wave breaks, its sound more raucous than the last. I am leaning blankly into the water, almost fainting. The sun too dizzying and blinding. A rush of phrases to reassure themselves that this too, must have been an affect of the physical human condition failing - either the bones in me freezing or the eyes blinding. The human condition must resist the water, the depths. We always throw stones instead of our own bodies to uncover the deep. Every human life is some series of stateless intervention; every human connection a seeming attempt at independence within a system that has only ever seen consistency. There is no dead thing that rattles. There is no rock at the bottom unswept.
Every rock I throw corrodes itself, then cupping a human body that had once cupped it. There is some necessary roughness to this living.
π π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π ππ π