Essayistic Water ~ early mornings lead to wet daydreams

 

 

Drought in the Pacific Northwest is not a concern for most people, the dripping tap and deep flushing toilets never offer a second thought. Reasonable admonishments come from those who exist in the dust and the dry, the sand and the salt, save the water they holler, relish the water they scream, treasure the water they cry. Yet we do none of these things.

 

It pours across our bodies in rivulets, down drains thick and rusted, clogged with the hair of broken hearts and the grease of forgotten dreams. Water that will never refill the reservoir of human consciousness nor the aquifers beneath our feet. Water that we say falls from the sky nearly every day, the long and persistent seasons of dreary drab and grey. Clouds heavy and close, the claustrophobia morphing into nephophobia. (Watson, K. 2019) Deep and threatening, draining us of our dopamine and serotonin, we stay indoors to avoid the precipitous palpations of weather and the heart. In our avoidance of life we waste more life down the drains.

 

Not drinking enough water for our bodies to operate at full steam ahead, the locomotion of humanity is encased in water we keep at arm’s length. Tell me of a day that you did not touch the rivers of despair, the streams of anxiety, and the tides of emotion. Wet and deep and taking all our efforts not to forget, but it is perhaps too late as it is. Death is dehydration, and we are dehydrating our planet as we go.

 

Recommendations of volume a day, guzzling eight, no nine, let’s say 10 okay how about 15 for men and 11 for women. (Sachdev, 2023) Cups, that is. Childhood memories vaguely recollect the eight cups a day mantra, hammered into our brains like water torture, our mouths slick with spit and knowledge. Smarter and wetter, they always say.

Aquifers run deep, you laugh at the truth, it’s funny because it’s true. Is it funny that we deny our own bodies of water the flood they require? Showers of rain fall from the ceiling, condensed into droplets of stress and panic, don’t panic, don’t forget your towel, don’t waste too much. Too much time, too much water, too much love.

 

What is it that any of us have? Time, water or love. What is it that any of us are made of? Time, water, and love. 

 

Shockingly cold, the drips fall on glasses fogged with the steam of thought. Locomotion of the so-called collective unconscious until we find ourselves back where we started. Wet or dry, the vacuum of space is like amnesia, taking all we think and tossing it into the compost heap of time travel. No forward movement is made in the capitalistic nation of advancements. Technology doesn’t operate well against the forces of natural greed. 

 

Future or past, we are still damp, soggy, and leaking. Tears run down skin so dry and cracked, the trails of broken desert jagged and rough across your cheek. Absorb the water, drink the water, be the water. How much of a conundrum we are in is debatable, like the schrodinger (Matthias, M. 2025) of bathtubs and buckets, the box and the cat do not prefer to get wet. Visions or nightmares decades ahead could lean either way. Trajectories of moisture fall below standards, and the global standards have certainly plummeted. Drought is a severe fear and reality, while it may remain unseen for some, for others it is the blaze of awareness that keeps them up at night.

 

The standard of basic human rights is barely retained in corners of the barrel, round and cylindrical; those darn corners can be hard to find, but we find them nonetheless. Over the falls we go, broken bones heal faster when you don’t get the cast all wet. Plaster only gets wet once, unlike your mom. Don’t blame me, the door was left wide open, and the misogynistic humour of my upbringing waltzed right on in with more analogies of why humans are terrible. 

 

The opposite of terrible, a childhood spent floating on cedar and broken dreams, the loft and height of empathy for the earth is exceptional if not existential, at best. Youth exposed to the lifeblood of all living beings can be mind opening, it is true. What other words of water would you want? Isn’t it enough to be composed of it? 

Work Cited

Matthias, Meg. "Schrödinger’s cat". Encyclopedia Britannica, 19 Mar. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/science/Schrodingers-cat  Accessed 22 March 2025.

 

WebMD Editorial Contributors, and Poonam Sachdev. “How Much Water Should I Drink a Day?” WebMD, 02 November 2023, https://www.webmd.com/diet/how-much-water-to-drink 

Watson, Kathryn, and Timothy J. Legg. “Nephophobia: Understanding the Fear of Clouds.” healthline, 2019, https://www.healthline.com/health/list-of-phobias#common-fears