Here and There

In the beginning, there was only water.  Then there was land, chiseled by ice.  One million years ago the perfect basin was cut and formed for what would be Michi Gami.  Or, six thousand years ago, essence preceded existence, and a lake was conceived as if it were formed by a glacier a million years before. 

Water trickles through soil and capillaries, underground streams and reservoirs, springs out in bogs and rivers, billows into waves and sprays itself into the air, dissipates, rains, and collects with the morning dew.  There is no beginning or end.  Three hundred twenty-six quintillion gallons of water in the earth and sky.  A cubic meter of air might contain thirty grams of water.  A cubic mile of fog might fill a gallon bucket. 

The attraction between two drops of water is extraordinary.  They couple with no discernible separation.  With the right eye or right lens, one can see design in its instrumentation, but you will not see what it is, or, who it is – not an anthropomorphic who, but its being, essence.  Maybe with the right instrument one could hear the single drop and imagine an aria in a river chorus of a quintillion single drops.  Perhaps the river sings in a single voice as it flows from Lake Michigan into the Chicago river, across the locks to the Illinois, down the mighty Mississippi, out into the gulf stream.  The single raindrop that fell in Little Traverse Bay, someway up the shore, is not ambling near the Mackinac Strait, or passing the Memphis flood walls.  It is here and there.