I wanted to see if I could drink the whole river up. I went down when I thought the river would be sleepy, tired, lethargic slump sounds of grumpy sloops moving against their will under reluctant currents. I dipped my feet in the water but the mud took over my feet in mud and water-mud but it felt good, like velvet ice-cream. And as it surprised me with its all-encompassing enveloping of my skin, I realised I could not now move. Pleasure had taken me prisoner.
The river sent out what it had trapped in its mirror – reflections of the trees, the sky, the stars, a car, all skitted along the surface like oil painting movies and memories arcing twisting turning dark bottle green and inappropriate red
out of context
blue drops of the firament photographed and fondled and spun playfully towards me like a pyrotechnic presentation of what was really only the surrounding area. The colours and images swept up my body as I stood immobile and in wonder and awe at this trick, this talent I had never suspected – the river could capture the world and use it.
I came here to drink you! I shouted at the river. I came here to drink you dry!
But the river treated me like I was a child who didn’t know what was good for it. I was a sparrow tweeting nonsense to the golden eagle. I was a lion cub playing with the tail of the crocodile. I was a spit-foam of a wave having an argument with the North Atlantic Drift. The river run past pebble dash through amber snakes who lived entire lives in the waterfalls in seconds – art work more impermanent than sculptures in the sand, beauty more astonishing than
golden syrup dripping from the sun,
falling into the river as a summer rain-storm of treasure
– an ancient Celtic torc,
the broken necklace of a Norwegian princess,
falling into the waterfall and shapeshifting immediately into happy worms of nonsubstance.
I will have all of you! I shouted at the river.
The river answered this threat by pulling me under the water. My body gave way like a sapling in an avalanche. Down I went into an underworld of cinematic miniaturism. Specks and quarks, tidbits and flashes spun their way through the water like salespeople on their way to a conference. A tiny fish swam up close to my face and questioned me:
“What are you doing in here?”
“I am trying to drink the river,” I said.
“What are you?” the fish asked.
“A human being,” I said.
“I’ve never met a human being before. Do you know why the current only goes one way?”
“Gravity,” I replied.
The little fish examined me quizzically. It swam around behind me and then back in front of me.
Bubbles of quartz magnets popped out of its eyes slinking squirm bobbing mouth opening opening closing closing amethyst dreaming flipped my head around – my pretensions fizzled away like oil on a frying pan. I took a deep gulp of water which saturated every cell of my body so that I equalised with the river and lost my footing. I floated in the water like riverweed caught in the perfect pull between opposing currents. I was in that moment beyond movement or direction, beyond anchor, outside the playing field of matter. I could see how silly my answer had been.
There was no gravity down here.
And I felt it then like it had been spoken from within the very cells of my body, the river’s answer to my foolish demand:
You will not drink me. I will drink you.
I became water.