ears against waterfalls
trust is about falling
Adjoining Mars, water is now part of my daily/weekly communion practice. I know water is not a planet, but it’s certainly as mysterious and illusive as one. Some people I respect believe water to be an entity—an actual being—worthy of our utmost care, consideration, and praise. Whether or not that’s entirely true, there’s much to learn from this shapeshifting substance, one that makes up so much of what we and this planet are. I’m learning all kinds of ways to commune with water, whether by charging it in a glass jar in the sun before drinking, whispering sweet mantras and dreams to it, and I’m also about to explore further conversations with water through “inspiring” and then freezing it. It feels a bit looney sometimes, but I imagine that’s because I’ve grown up in a sterile and cynical society who chooses staunch materialism over having some god damned fun. *Yawn*
Water suddenly feels so pristine and vital, this glorious substance many of us, myself included, so often take for granted. I remember as a child when I lived in Utah, all of my friends were thin, beautiful mormon girls and I was a peculiar non-mormon outsider with a soft stomach. I was an anomaly with no siblings and I listened to grungier music than them, like Everclear and Weezer, but we still came together and played. One of the games we played was the Water Game. Looking back, it was essentially a drinking game that adults might play with alcohol, but we were kids and so we did it with water. I can’t recall it exactly, but I know it involved a coin and drinking tons of water. We held our pee too, because what is a game without a little self-inflicted pain? I remember one of the girls proclaiming, “Water makes your insides crystal!” We all giggled, feeling pure and whole and perfect. I’m touching this energy again. My insides are becoming crystal again.
Waterfalls in particular feel of the utmost importance lately. I mean, don’t they always? Waterfalls are so it. An intuition beckons me that they can teach me about power—real power, which I would soon learn is all about trust. No trust, no power. I think this is important to consider when thinking about the “ruling class”—what power do they really have if everything is built on deceit? I understand that they use a lot of force, can be truly dangerous and violent, and harness chaos in such a way that looks powerful, but it all feels so pathetic to me. Like the house of cards could fall over any minute—but they’d never admit it. Even if they are playing with “a” form of power, it’s not the kind that will make your insides crystal.
I chose to take the week off in honor of my salon transition, which also just so happens to fall over my birthday. Naturally, I decided I would spend this time out of the city upstate. Some weeks ago I started browsing airbnb’s but remembered my partner’s parents own a home in Ithica, NY, known for it’s “Gorgeous Gorges!”. They agreed to let us stay. For the entire week (with very little overhead) I am nestled between numerous waterfalls and can visit a new one everyday, if I wish. It’s honestly absurd how many waterfalls are in such a small radius. Small ones, giant ones; it’s some sort of Holyland I suppose. I feel gratitude to my partner’s parents for helping us create this gift of transition/birthday/waterfall. Sharing resources is revealing itself as a new art form—before I spend any money, is the thing I’m seeking already readily available, if not, who can I ask? Things are so much better shared.
Ithica is a pleasant 4 hour drive north of NYC. It’s winter still, obviously, but the weather is surprisingly temperate in the 40’s and 50’s. The surrounding falls are a stunning mix of ice and ice melt, and I am listening. There’s a small yet mighty waterfall just a ten minute walk from our door. It’s incredible how close we’re able to get to it, almost like being able to touch a unicorn. We take a short hike down to the base of the falls and play around for a bit, I find it rather hilarious to repeatedly pose with hang loose signs and my tongue sticking out, like some sort of idiot in the grace of wise giants—the falls and the root winding trees. My angels shine down upon me, dubbing me a most glorious goon. Before long, we head back upwards to experience the perspective from the top. I find myself throwing leaves and small sticks in the current that act as tiny ships, which I’m joyously sailing towards a most devastating fate. Sometimes the leaf or stick gets stuck, sometimes the force of the water liberates it. I cheer like a diabolical child, “Look at my leaf go!” “Go stick, go!” “Fall over the edge!”
”It’s really quite a scene from up here; you have the view from the top of one waterfall and if you turn around, you have another higher, wider waterfall that feeds the one below. A double waterfall if you will. The roar of the water is just loud enough that if you sit silently it can swallow you. Before long this is what we find ourselves doing, sitting and listening, our bodies synced in agreement without having made any declarations. The water jumps into infinitudes of expressions before falling, hypnotizing us. There’s really nothing to say. Or do. And even my thoughts quiet for a moment, and I become the kind of presence everyone is always going on about that we need more of.
Hmm, I think. Maybe this is part of the problem with always trying to be present. We make it a task, when really it’s more of a non-task. It’s what’s always running in the background, arguably it’s allowing for the whole show… You don’t find it so much as non-search.
Every time I feel the urge to stand, speak, or continue thinking, I force myself back into my gaze of the mesmerizing falls. By force I don’t mean like a tyrant, I mean by continual invitation. Force de return. I don’t have to keep choosing this waterfall moment over my to-do list or anything else my mind has dubbed suddenly important, but I let myself consider it is indeed a choice. I imagine this builds agency, and agency is indeed a muscle. Besides, all the things my mind is reminding me to do truly aren’t necessary right now. I have the whole week off, I’ve taken care of most of it already. Most of it can’t be taken care of because it requires the unhappened future to have it be actualized. It’s amazing how active the mind is. It’s amazing how active water can be, and how still it can be—how it can be both liquid and utterly solid. Even right next to itself, ice and roaring ice melt. Could I look to my own survival mechanisms~~my own states~~the way I view the various states of water—with beauty, and awe, and contradiction yet wholeness? The more I sit with nature (quietly) the less my gaze is one of a discerning, judging witness and the more I simply become it.
I told my friend I’m spending my birthday with some waterfalls and she asked if there were any secrets they shared with me? I told her “I think the secret is that there are no secrets, you just have to be quiet and listen.” I don’t know exactly when or where we got it in our heads that there is something being kept from us that we must dutifully rip the world apart to find. You can literally just sit by a waterfall and listen without needing to know anything, and you can still uncover god. Maybe this gets boring after a while, and we are addicted to not being bored.
I’m doing my best to really relax while I’m up here. To not push (not even to see as many waterfalls as possible), to take a couple leisurely baths a day1, and to stay off insta and instead read or simply stare out a window. Instead of maximizing my time here, I’m non-maximizing. I’ve been writing, but not as much as I dreamily told myself I would when I finally had all the time in the world to. Isn’t that how it goes?
I bought a new book based on its cover called Carnality which is so so good, and I came across an essay on substack that I haven’t been able to get out of my head. Basically the author, who’s lived all over the world and experienced many experiences, discusses how we’ve lost touch with an embodied, Gaian form of taking up space ie. territory/territorialism—which I enjoyed reading about because many (if not all) creatures, especially apes, are territorial to varying extents and we should be no different. They offer a refreshing, less academic, philosophical meandering assessment of viewing human “ownership” and return it to a kind of natural way of looking at things, which I can usually get behind.
I’m still mulling over it, and I’ll confess there was one part that I felt a little allergic to—which is any time the language “as nature intended…” is incited. Really, what do as any one person know about what nature intends? I’m asking this honestly, because it seems the more any of us claim what the whole of nature wants (intends) the weirder things gets. Then again, maybe I’m missing the mark—maybe this is coming from listening to the wrong people/perspectives, and from being someone whose lineage is particularly colonized ie. severed. Years and years of being encouraged to pluck myself out of the web of belonging and instead root myself from the seat of the perpetually unsatisfied, righteous “self” is likely to cause an unknowing or distrust of nature’s “intentions”. But in all honesty, I don’t feel so bold to claim nature has intentions or what they are, but I appreciate varying interpretations and perspectives beyond people sitting in rooms abstracting reality without really going and living in it.
Maybe it all can be true, that we are supposed to know what nature intends and also not know. Maybe it’s actually a lot more localized and a lot less global. Corruption happens, apparently, but everything seems to seek a return to stasis… or something. Honestly, maybe this is the whole dance.
I went to church on my birthday. Not in a human made chapel where people come to their knees and pray, but to a deep canyon which nestles within it a massive waterfall that we humans refer to as Taughannock Falls. It’s power roars over a 215 foot drop, I stand beneath from a distance that doesn’t let me touch it by hand, but I can still very much feel it. I notice a gentleness settle in my chest cavity, even though it’s loud, cold, and misty.
I want to take a picture of this magical scene, this way I could share it with you/others. But I realize not only would a picture do it no justice, it would be an injustice. No image can encapsulate the experience of being with a place that feels so holy as this one. It’s really something people should experience for themselves, wherever they are, we owe it to ourselves to not settle for images. The holiness I feel here is because I am the one able to be in the presence of holiness. I watch other on-passer’s walk up to the falls, snap a photo and leave. Blasphemy! I think through giggles. Who am I to judge? I’m just out here crying and vibing with a waterfall.
Words come to me in tiny floods and I feel compelled to write them down. I’m not convinced they are really the waterfall communicating with me, but probably just my own little ideas sprouting from my welling inspiration of the falls. On my way up to the falls, I study the still frozen chunks of ice covering the sides of the river. They read like geologic rocks, revealing different layers of sediment or perhaps temperature or erosion. Everything is telling a story of time and process, I realize. And as for the waterfall… a waterfall is about trust. All of that water falling over a ledge. Being pulled by a flow it can’t quite foresee nor control. Trust will feel like falling, like death. Disorienting and uncomfortable—and freeing. But all water lands and survives, even if it doesn’t make it into the next body of water. Water survives because it can change shape. Water survives because it trusts itself to lose itself and find itself again.
A waterfall is about trust. And so is everything else.
I don’t have a bathtub in NYC and this needs to change ASAP.
YOU CAN TAKE A BATH AT MY PLACE ANYTIME!!!