water

Water exists totally around and within us, a simple molecule flowing through things and allowing reactions to happen.

Water sticks to other things, and so carves the landscape on its pathways to the ocean. It suspends life, folds enzymes into shape, can dissolve carbon bonds into energy, and prepare DNA for expression. As a source of yin, water breaks apart when the chlorophyll directs a ray of sunlight and creates oxygen gas while storing energy. As a product of yang, water is formed when a mitochondria digests electrons down toward oxygen, pulling hydrogens and forming H2O.

Water sticks to itself, and so settles below the air. A water molecule is only ten protons and eight neutrons, lighter than the ingredients of air: a nitrogen gas molecule is normally 14 protons and 14 neutrons, an oxygen gas molecule is normally 16 protons and 16 neutrons, and a carbon dioxide molecule is normally 22 protons, and 22 neutrons. Each molecule of air is heavier than each molecule of water, but water sticks to itself and pools below and into itself. Upon the surface, it absorbs the energy of the sun, rising and flowing, shaping the weather, the seasons, and the climate. Itself, water forms a shape that is always in transition, the shape of the rolling cloud, the dripping drop, the flowing stream, the ebbing and reaching glacier, and the rocking sea. Water sticks to itself and down to the center of the Earth, flowing back down to the deep all the way around this spherical home. From afar, the oceans reveal the structure of our planet's surface, with the continents as the highest places.

All life is in and around water. By weight, life is water. Humans are about 70% water; some plants are closer to 90%. Life is of course more than water, but it is largely intelligent water management. Water-life swims in the fluid. Land-life is structured around water conservation. As life synthesizes proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, a water molecule pops out when the new bond connects. As life catalyzes these molecules, waters hydrolyze the bonds apart, sticking a water back in. Bilayer membranes, the basic cellular structure of living things, are formed because they are not attracted to water.

If you push against it, water will give. And so, in order to move through it, a swimmer pushes not straight but with a changing angle – the fish gracefully twist a side-to-side wave through water. Water resists because it is sticky but does not push like the friction against earth.

We might as well appreciate water, this most simple and basic thing, the translucent source of a rainbow, the amorphous shaper of the land, the tasteless source of life experience. While water sticks to itself, it is still involved with many other things.

Water gives and flows back. It rains and comes back. To the ocean and then up and back over, as a drop onto land and then down, through, cleansing us along the way again, fertilizing through us again, energizing up and released back down to the Earth, and allowing the reactions of dynamic plants to happen again: a simple molecule that exists totally within and around us.