the lost man chronicles
ripples (in the bay) .74

I escaped for a bit from all the hoopla in a canoe this afternoon and out in the middle of no particular place, I sat in the halcyon breeze.

Suddenly, I was besieged by the amazing splendor that went about me.

The water at first glance was merely crest upon crest, my trite acceptance of what waves are, had predisposed me to perceive the undulating liquid keeping me afloat as simply so much as what one might also see undulating atop a field of grain.

But I was in the sea, or at least in its wake, in the bay, that domesticated edge where civilization appears anew. And there, I sat alone when suddenly this preconceived notion was honed asunder. For as I looked down, I took note of the gorgeous dynamic pattern which was forming about me.

Waves are hardly as simple as they seem. A mere slower and patient look will allow one to notice that as the wind licks the surface to push, the underlying current might be puling in a diagonally different direction. Combined with the force of your own presence breaking the tame and chaotic flux, the resulting design is mesmerizing—moving curves that ebb and flow against echoes that are circular, all of which is ornamented by the trickles, the glitter, the glimmer of the sun tickling the water.

Of course, the splendor could not end there, as I noticed the humble water trickling from the raised oar that was attempting to escape my attention. Each drop dripped and plummeted to form these ever expanding and dissipating bands of circles, almost as if each one knew it was returning to be with every other one, and thus consciously returned by blending in the most considerate and inconspicuous pattern possible.

And as time would guide me to see, I also eventually saw that the solitary drop, not only falls and reflects light a thousand times before hitting the water, when it does hit it bumps against the surface and then immediately bounces back, allowing me to see her whole again before she disappears back into the fold. The reverberation was just as I imagined the movement of good love making to be.

Finally, the last observation I made before deciding to head back in, was perhaps the most incredible of all the phenomena—the dual concentricity which coalesced with each soft dip of the paddle. For once I had broken the delicate surface and lifted the spoon, the water folded simultaneously at the two ends of the resulting line, swirling into two whirlpools that eventually merged in the middle, and as one, kept moving out and away, seemingly gaining momentum until it disappeared into itself. It looked like an animated implosion of the top of an ionic column, and it was truly amazing.

Surely, I could have dug further into my fortune of discovery and awareness, but I was afraid that I might not want to return should I continue by looking or listening or loving with all my senses in another direction.






feeling quixotic (about string theory) .73 previous chronicle the beginning next chronicle 75. breaking rippled glass


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