we are as water; weak and of no consequence, always descending, abiding in no certain place, unless we are detained with violence; and every little breath of wind makes us rough and tempestuous and troubles our faces; every trifling accident discomposes us; and as the face of waters wafting in a storm so wrinkles itself that it makes upon its forehead furrows deep and hollow like a grave, so do our great and little cares and trifles first make the wrinkles of old age, and then they dig a grave for us; and there is in nature nothing so contemptible, but it may meet us in such circumstances that it may be too hard for us in our weakness; and the sting of a bee is a sharp weapon enough to pierce the finger of a child or the lip of a man; and those creatures which nature hath left without weapons yet are they armed sufficiently to vex those parts of a man which are left defenseless and obnoxious to a sunbeam, to the roughness of a sour grape, to the unevenness of a gravel stone to the dust of a wheel, or the unwholesome breath of a star looking awry upon a sinner

— jeremy taylor

1 If we are as water, liquid and adaptive, then we wish to display ourselves to the world as ice: solid and assured and unmoving—as a rock for others to lean on; but we are more like steam. The transient space of metaphor and image conducts reality toward representation consequentially producing a catalytic reaction, a spark, the heat, which commits one’s liquid life to vapor. Decompress, get swept up in the wind, dwell in the lungs of men, ride upon a sunbeam, flow down the stream into another being.

2 Sometimes, it helps to look at the sky when rowing these uncertain waves. Clouds may offer solace where water even fails. The decompressed molecules hovering up there provide the needed winds for one’s sails. Recently I’ve been getting so high that I can touch the silver lining. Yet even heavenly clouds comprise the floor of a cosmic sea, of which we are all grotesque bottomfeeders.