I am reading next week's seminar book entitled Water. It is quite beautiful so far, and I am resonating a lot with it. There was a section I read tonight that hit way too close to home for me to continue reading without writing some first. As I am still on a quest for new journal, this is the most apt place for these thoughts right now. The article is called "Women, Water" by Jowita Bydlowska and discusses this archetypal image of a women, broken-hearted in the bath tub, smoking a cigarette, seeking comfort in the slowly releasing warmth.

I haven't taken a bath...
for...
a decade, maybe (scary to be able to say). Maybe less, but it has been a long-ass time. Even so, I knew what the author was getting at. The feeling of water --of being immersed in water, or feeling it cascade over my head-- is one of the most comforting (and raw) experiences there is. In controlled situations, like a bathtub, it does not feel dangerous, except when dealing with unattended children, inebriated people, or... a self that doesn't necessarily ever want to emerge. "Depression" she says "is not waiting. Not waiting to find out what is out there, why, when, who's around the corner, is anyone. It is not caring if no one cares and one does care then you do not anyway. When the worst of depression strikes it is falling to the bottom of a dark lake, slowly, majestically, silently."

This is when bathtubs become dangerous.
[Your calm, internal terror is more concerned that you will let go intentionally, then that you will slip.]

"I let my arms float, my hair move about my face like weed. I opened my eyes. My hair danced. The water stung. I shut my eyes. But I remained on the bottom."

"I realized then that I was wrong. I was waiting. I was waiting for something after all. This confused me. Did it mean that I wasn't serious about what I was thinking of doing?"

"How do you fight when you have no fight left?"

"I wasn't quite ready to drown all the way."

"I needed to be moving. Otherwise I was going to end up like..."

"[Time] stretched and opened before me endlessly, a surface so wide it crushed me with possibility."

"We are still, but not stuck."

like water