Find a river

June 16, 2018 4:46 PM

The metaphysics of water. Lakes, river, the ocean — they spur us to reckon with the immense and the unknown, to confront life’s fluidity.
posted by spaceburglar (4 comments total)

Why is the spectacle of the sea so infinitely & so eternally pleasing?
Because the sea evokes both the idea of immensity and of movement. Six or seven leagues represent for man the radius of the infinite. There’s a diminutive infinity. Of what importance if it suffices to suggest the idea of the total infinite? Twelve or fourteen leagues (on the diameter), twelve or fourteen of liquid in motion suffice to give the highest idea of beauty that is offered to man in his transitory dwelling.

According to Baudelaire.
posted by vrakatar at 5:56 PM on June 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

In Sumerian mythology abzu 𒍪 𒀊 was the primordial water which existed before the world and still underlays the land.
posted by XMLicious at 4:06 AM on June 17, 2018

If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.
Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;

My liturgy would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,

And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.

Water, Philip Larkin
posted by Devonian at 7:16 AM on June 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

I remember, in a book I read many, years ago, there was a wonderful footnote where the author briefly compared water as a symbol in different world religions....there's enough for a big book, in that idea.
posted by thelonius at 6:38 PM on June 17, 2018