Experience of Water

Poetic beginnings

My proposal centres around the experience of water task completed at the beginning of semester. Specifically, the experience a wave on the body.

As the wave crashes over you, there is chaos. The wave drags you into its control. It invites you through. It forces you through. Then it smashes. It consumed you, as you consume it. There is no escape. You exist in chaos.

Under the water, there is calm. You are being tumbled around. You have no control. But it is freeing. If you dove, you control this moment. If not, you release control. Either way you are free. Free from yourself. Detatched

As you emerge, there is calm. There is peace. You have conquered the chaos, and now reap the rewards. You are now truly free - freed. You regain control. You regain you. You may look to the horizon. You are present. You now exist in a space between moments. Between moments of chaos. Between the rough. Between consumption. You exist in calm

Chaos, as I see it, has two forms. The difference? Control.

When you lack control of the chaos life is hard. You are pulled by a riptide. You follow the flow. You fail. Living in the chaos without control is an everyday experience for many. Grinding through the rat-race of modernity. Being pushed and pulled from one task to the next, without time alone. Without time away. However, through this chaotic lack of control, life occurs. And life is good. Life has suprises and excitement. It may be argued that we never have control of our life. That everything is predetermined. That it is simply physics. However true this is, there can still be the illusion of control.

When you have control of the chaos life is good. You are riding the wave. You push forward. You succeed. Living in and controlling the chaos is a particularly juvenille experience. That is to say that it is lost with age. The naivity of youth detatches you from the worries of being in the chaos. Chaos here is exciting and inviting.

Similarly calm may be disected into two forms. One with, and one without, control.

Calm without control is abstract. You become dissassociated. This, I believe, is when you may connect to other realms. To other lives. To the heavens. We, people, cannot choose when we are able to experience afterlife. It is decided for us, and thus we have no control. To some this lack of control is chaotic. If this is you, you are doomed to a life of chaos. However, if you allow yourself to lack control, calm may ensue.

Calm with control too is abstract. We do not experience it here. We only experience it once we have been chosen. It is the conection to other realms. To other lives. To the heavens. As opposed to the aforementioned state, calm with control is a process. A process which once achieved continues for eternity. Ironically it cannot be escaped. But that is the thing with control - who wants to give it up?