DROPS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

There’s a special kind of magic that comes from dipping into the water at the edge of day, when the songs of the birds and the frogs and the crickets converge, when the colors of the sky reflect in the colors of the water, making one indistinguishable from the other. The last gasps of light enhance the texture of the sweet water and it morphs, just for those fleeting moments, into something quite its opposite: solid, permanent, timeless. It enhances my senses and never ceases to put on a display like I’ve never before seen, yet in a place that’s so very familiar. Perception is everything. While the water isn’t warmer, it feels like bath water against the contrast of the cooling evening air as the hilltop begins its daily ritual of swallowing the sun.

Ideas drop into my consciousness just as raindrops disrupt the still, glassy surface. Once they start, there’s no stopping them. Both the ideas and the raindrops can arrive without warning, seemingly out of nowhere. It’s impossible to ignore either of them, like that evening when the bubbles on the surface of the water seemed to arise from the mysterious dark depths of the thermocline, the exact depth below the surface where the temperature drops the fastest. While I most often choose to linger horizontally in the epilimnion, the comfortable oxygen-rich top layer of well-mixed water that’s been heated by the sun and has interacted with the wind, I’m a sucker for contrast and the growth that ensues. I occasionally let my torso and legs drop and linger in the metalimnion, the transition zone where the temperatures rapidly change. Just as in life, it’s in that transition zone where we’re often awakened.

Although it’s that time of year where the weather can change dramatically and unexpectedly, I wasn’t expecting rain, and had never before been at eye level with the surface of water at that very moment it began to fall. As I paused mid-stroke and paddled in place to stay above water, spinning around in slow motion to survey my surroundings, I was eye to eye with the clear, mysterious domes dancing on the surface, seeming to gather around and watch me intently, countless transparent, alien eyes. They floated in graceful stillness as more and more joined the others with each plop of a new drop. They surrounded me, waiting to see what my next move would be, to see if I would notice them, to see if I would act or react. Between them, the water striders skated across the surface, leaving perfect, miniature wakes for their companions to disrupt and zoom through—the water’s surface was a live canvas of orchestrated chaos. I was intrigued by the fact that the drops didn’t just fall and disappear into the existing accumulation of the countless drops that had come before them to form this body of water. The irony that the rain arrived when I was submersed in and surrounded by water reflected the same irony of yet another idea arriving to join the thousands that had preceded this one. Because there was no thunder and I was already wet, I stayed to enjoy the show, to dive into the lessons this simple yet complex phenomenon had come teach me.  

In all my decades, I hadn’t before seen bubbles form in this way. In the moment I couldn’t explain it, but later, seemingly by chance, but knowing it wasn’t, I learned that it’s basic physics: the falling raindrop creates a crater in the water, which collapses and traps air, causing each bubble. That air trapped inside is like the ideas inside my head: just as an idea will only form with the right combination of circumstances, the bubble will only form if it’s of a specific size and falls from a specific height, with a specific impact momentum required to generate the bubble. I was the beneficiary of it all.

With the arrival of each raindrop, there’s tension, then release, as it pops, merging the once-drop to join the drops that have come before it, to lose itself and become one with the rest of the water. Such it is with ideas. Are ideas really a fourth, intangible state of water in disguise? Ideas, like water, are sometimes resisted yet always longed for. After all, nothing human-made would exist without ideas, and nothing at all would exist without water. That tension is a gift. Just as it allows the water striders to do their miraculous dance, water’s weak bond crates a thin, invisible skin, appearing stronger than glass. It adheres to itself, the meniscus bulging, teasing that it’s going to spill over, but when it’s at that perfect state, if it's not disrupted, it never will.

No two raindrops, no two ideas, will ever be the same. They both transition from clarity to murkiness then back to clarity. I can never get enough. I’m never satiated. This I know: no matter how hesitant I am, no matter how much I resist it, once I commit and dive in, whether to the water or to the idea, I never regret it. Remembering that soon enough the vibrant, warm layer will be frigid and still and impenetrable is enough motivation to seize the opportunity. In the water and through the ideas, I fully experience and embrace my humanity. I’m reflected in them both, and they are a reflection of me. Water emerges in teardrops and sweat, glistening in tribulation or in triumph, in sadness or in joy. Ripples of light dance in the reflection. Wind pushes the surface in one direction, while my body breaks the surface and pushes it in another. The dip of my hand swirls. The composition of the water draws those that need its gifts to it. It provides what is needed for those who arrive: for the frogs, for the salamanders, for the crayfish, for the water striders, for me.

Just as rain trickles through layers of dirt and rock to reemerge as clear spring water, the seed of my idea filters through experiences, interactions, and environments, then resurfaces with clarity, ready to be consumed. Just as the rain drops could be swallowed straight from the sky with head titled back, eyes closed, mouth wide open to receive the manna from above, the end product of the idea is worth waiting for by giving it time to get muddled then resurface in its own due time, more enriched than it ever could have been without allowing for it to gather the what it needed on its journey. An idea can no more be forced than the purification of the ground water can be forced. Patience. Diving in when the conditions are right will be worth the wait.

Photo by Yoann Boyer on Unsplash