If you’re familiar with some of the posts on my blog here, you’ll probably know that just across the road from where I live there’s a Roman Spring. In French, it’s called “la source”, and I’m pretty keen on that word.
I often go across and spend some time there. Last summer we had a long and pretty severe drought and the water stopped overflowing from the pool into the aqueduct, but after a particularly wet start to the year, it’s flowing abundantly again.
Look at this photo I took of the water as it pours over into the aqueduct. Look down at the bottom left of the image. I’m fascinated by the shape of the water there. As water pours over a ledge like this it often takes the shape of continuous sheet, so it looks a bit like a textile, a piece of material. But in this instance that sheet has curled up at the edge so you can see the water rise up from the ground, curve round, then dive back down to disappear over the stone.
In fact, if you look closely you’ll see parallel lines, or ridges, in that curl.
Isn’t this just amazing? How these millions of water molecules flow together to create temporary, but quite elaborate, shapes, appearing almost like objects you could reach out to, and gather up.
I can’t help but think of how much a delusion it is to see reality as a construction built from separate fixed objects. How reality is in fact a constant flow of interacting forces which give the appearance of stuff which can be grasped, held, and stored.
Nothing is permanent. Nothing is separate. Nothing is fixed.
And one more thing….what utter beauty emerges from the creative interactions of natural forces.
Heroes Not Zombies 
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