Four Properties Of Water & Self

Summer turns on spokes called arms and feet, one cartwheel after another. Wet grass and gangly appendages are the force and the opposition:
a water molecule has a positive charge on the side where the hydrogen atoms are and a negative charge on the other side, where the oxygen atom is. Since opposite electrical charges attract, water molecules tend to attract each other, making water kind of "sticky":
you find yourself recumbent, lying there in the grass, full of smiles, full of giggles. Your faces is heaven bent. Your skin is embellished with grass, dirt, and droplets of water. Penetrating the creases of your skin, these droplets linger and cling. They are the essence of your barefoot frolicking, your carefree afternoon gambles, your tiptoeing hide and seek gestures. Summer resides in your skin, droplet by droplet, attracting more days like it.


Thrashing like Neptune's piscine tail, the wave pulls you down. You struggle to pull yourself up. You struggle to capture short fleeting breathes. Your feet seems to escape your body, they seem to drift away. Your torso and arms bob up and down. Each time you resurface you swallow bigger and bigger gulps of water:
Water is called the "universal solvent" because it dissolves more substances than any other liquid. This means that wherever water goes, either through the ground or through our bodies, it takes along valuable chemicals, minerals, and nutrients:
The waves subside and your body barrels free from the whirlpool's clutches. The ocean's wild pulsing loses momentum, and you swim towards your surf board that was wiped out from under your feet. You get on top of it and calmly paddle away. Another close call.




You are driving in your car through Taos, New Mexico. The road is straight and ruler thin. The landscape is draped in a purple motley hue: a mixture of rain, lighting, and dust. The thunder scares you, so you try to focus on the rhythmic swoosh of the windshield wipers instead. As the sound lulls away your fear, your eye catches the beady rain drops that have collected on the car window. You watch their slow, tear drop descent, their delicate Bolshoi ballet:
Water has a very high surface tension. In other words, water is elastic, and tends to clump together in drops rather than spread out in a thin film.
You sigh, and are reminded of all the unromantic notions that your high school science teacher has inculcated you with. Rain drops are not graceful ballerinas, they don't really glide. It's surface tension that is responsible for capillary action, and capillary action that leads to there descent and rupture.


In youth, you were fluid and fearless. You dressed up like your favorite superhero and comic book villain. In your middle age, you had your heart broken by men in Brooks Brother suits with crooked looks. Your heart condensed, it froze, it became as solid as a rock. No longer invincible, you shunned the world and the world shunned you. In your old age, your expressions hid behind a curtain of drooping skin and sunken muscle. As you walked the streets, people didn't even stop to say hello or even to take notice. In effect, you became invisible:
Water is unique in that it is the only natural substance that is found in all three states -- liquid, solid (ice), and gas (steam) -- at the temperatures normally found on Earth. Earth's water is constantly interacting, changing, and in movement:
As time pressed forward your physical state changed, your soul transitioned, you evolved. Youth, middle age, old age: you've seen it all. Changing from one phase into another, you can now proudly call yourself an alchemist.