They say a watched pot never boils. That's an old Earth saying, from around 3000 years ago I reckon. Unless you've been to this backwards planet at the edge of the galaxy you'll have no idea what a pot is, or why it would boil, or why anyone would watch it.
I say it's a backwards planet, but we've learned to like it this way. Unintentionally, or perhaps intentionally, we've made it this way. Over a couple of hundred years most of our equipment has failed due to our poor maintenance. We've never seemed to get around to replacing it. Such things have never seemed important to us. So we boil water in pots.
Pots are metal vessels. We place these vessels over fires that we deliberately light and control. We do this to cook our food or to make hot beverages. I know it sounds weird. Why not just press a button on the AutoChef? Like I said, we like it this way.
You see, the water here is different to other water. It's alive. It communicates with us, in various ways.
It never liked the AutoChef. We could sense a feeling of indignation whenever the water was pumped into the machinery. The water doesn't seem to mind being boiled. It seems to enjoy feeling useful, being involved with us. And we like being involved with the water. We live together here, us humans and the water.
We collect the water from streams, boil it in pots, make tea, then communicate with the tea as we drink it. Because the water is always up for a chat, one way or another.
The water is part of us, or we are part of the water, or something like that. We think it's some kind of telepathy, but we don't think about it too much. It doesn't seem to matter.
The same Earth people who said that thing about watching pots boil used to write poetry about water, or use water as a way to describe other things. We figure water has always shared some sort of telepathy with humans. It's just stronger here, or we're more aware of it.
Our entire lives are like poems. Poems unwritten, unspoken, instead lived. Us and the water. Beautiful and, well, poetic.
It's true though. If you sit and watch a pot of water over the fire, it never boils. The water gets to talking, wants to know what we're doing, dinner for the family or tea, or some warm water for bathing? Until we walk away and look elsewhere the water remains too distracted to boil, too interested in what we're going to do together next. We laugh about it, us and the water, but I guess it's the closest we've come to conflict since we ceased using detergents.
I wonder if the Earth water all those years ago was trying to get through to its human friends and would take longer to boil when someone slowed down long enough to give it some attention?
Is the water here different, more telepathic? Or are we different, more able to hear?
We like our backwards planet here at the edge of the galaxy, and our water, and our fire, and our pots. We flow together, an endless stream. Never the same water, never the same human, us and the water.
Parkstreet
No comments:
Post a Comment