Uranus (In the Deep Water)

Imagine you're in a rowing boat on a lake
It's summer, early morning
That time when the sun hasn't quite broken free of the landscape
And long, projected shadows tigerstripe the light
The rays are warm on your skin as you drift through them
But in the shadows the air is still cold
Greyness holding onto undersides and edges wherever it can
A low clinging breeze comes and goes
Racing ripples across the water and gently rocking you and your boat
As you float in yin-yang slices of morning
Birds are singing. It's a sharp, clear sound
Clean without the humming backing track of a day well underway
There's the occasional sound of wind in leaves
And the occasional slap-splash of a larger wavelet breaking on the side of your boat
But nothing else
You reach over the side and feel the shock of the water
The steady bob of the lake's movement playing up and down your knuckles in a rhythm of cold
You pull your arm back; you enjoy the after-ache in your fingers
Holding out your hand, you close your eyes
And feel the tiny physics of gravity and resistance
As the liquid finds routes across your skin
Builds itself into droplets of the required weight
Then falls
Each drop ending with an audible tap

Now, right on that tap, stop
Stop imagining
Here's the real game
Here's what's obvious and wonderful and terrible all at the same time
The lake in my head the lake I was imagining, has just become the lake in your head
It doesn't matter if you never know me
Or never know anything about me
I could be dead, I could have been dead a hundred years before you were even born and still
Think about this carefully
Think past the obvious sense of it to the huge amazing miracle hiding inside
The lake in my head has become the lake in your head
Behind or inside or through the two hundred and eighteen words that made up my description
Behind or inside or through those nine hundred and sixty-nine letters
There is some kind of flow
A purely conceptual stream
With no mass or weight or matter
And no ties to gravity or time
A stream that can only be seen
If you choose to look at it from the precise angle we are looking from now
But nevertheless
A stream
Flowing directly from my imaginary lake
Into yours

Now try to visualize all the streams of human interaction, of communication
All those linking streams flowing in and between people
Through text, pictures
Spoken words and TV commentaries
Streams through shared memories, casual relations
Witnessed events, touching pasts and futures
Cause and effect
Try to see this immense latticework of lakes and flowing streams
See the size and awesome complexity of it
This huge rich environment
This waterway paradise of all information and identities and societies and selves
Now, go back to your lake
Back to your gently bobbing boat
But this time, know the lake
Know the place for what it is and when you're ready
Take a look over the boat's side
The water is clear and deep
Broken sunlight cuts blue wedges down, down into the clean cold depths
Sit quietly, wait and watch
Don't move
Be very, very still
They say life is tenacious
They say given half a chance, or less
Life will grow and exist and evolve anywhere
Even in the most inhospitable and unlikely of places
Life will always find a way, they say
Be very quiet
Keep looking into the water
Keep looking
And keep watching