Water Is Life

Water Is Life

by Joan Medina

© 6/29/2021

In the time of pandemic everything became clear. A puzzling array of circumstance rearranged itself into organized chapters within my mind. And once this dawning rose upon the horizon of my thoughts, it became easier to sort through the shadows of memory and recall events previously lost.

During months of languishing in isolation, I suffered through a fog of pain and exhaustion that crippled any ability to form coherent thought. Neuropathy in my legs and feet seemed to have risen through my core and settled into my brain, melting the mass of gray jelly and rendering me useless.

So I slept. I slept for months. Months turned into years. Mail piled up into towers around me, spilling onto the floor and rising into graduating heights of architecture that impressed with both its organic design and permanence. Once empty boxes became filled with campaign leaflets, advertisements, offers to purchase property, and unopened bills. Stacked one upon another, they formed an empire of leaning spires built up like a secondary wall between myself and the outside world. A fortress of sorts.

It was from these very walls that the lavender purple envelope addressed to me in elegant calligraphy fluttered to the floor in front of where I dozed. I opened my eyes at the whispery sound and glared at the object of disruption until I realized what it was. An overlooked correspondence from one of my most beloved friends, Delia.

Moments later, I was pulling out a mysterious item carefully wrapped in handcrafted paper infused with organic leaves and flower petals. The words “To Leigh, from my heart to yours, may we always remember our connections and why they are important, ~ D” greeted me in the same style of flourishes that marked the envelope.

Tucked into the folds of the paper was a small beaded anatomical heart, perfect in grotesque shape and dark colors, strung on a black satin ribbon. After admiring Delia’s craftsmanship, I realized that the gold along the left ventricle was a slide clasp, and slipped it apart. The heart was a locket and inside was a perfectly preserved purple lupine flower. I remembered that our friend Willow uses lupine to bring healing to devastated communities, land, and people.

Part One.

At first, I had worried that I was unable to safely vaccinate against the disease. Years before I’d had severe reactions to other vaccines and medications that took me to the brink of death. Doctors advised that I could avoid viral risk if I simply isolated.

Then came a period of time when I was so desperate to mingle among actual people, I almost threw caution to the wind and put my life on the line. To feel the warmth of a smile through the eyes of a stranger even when I could not see the curve of their lips hidden behind the piece of cloth covering their face? To hear the voices of people rippling around me, although muffled under layers of fabric? To bask in the unbridled energy of a child running freely, squealing with excitement or laughing with joy? These things became forbidden fruit. I craved social interaction. I longed for the presence and energy of real, living human beings around me.

That was before the Second Wave.

Part Two.

The changes were so subtle and insidious, no one really noticed it at first. For many, it started with minor anxiety. Fear of running out of toilet paper or cleaning supplies. Then it was convenience foods, prepared meals you could eat from a can. Bottled water. Basics one might need to survive for a few months.

Hoarders had two primary justifications for their behavior. One was worry about personal needs. The other was a kind of community savior mentality. In case someone they knew needed something, they could provide it. Their homes, garages, and rented storage spaces became personal warehouses full of a lifetime’s worth of supplies.

In contrast, the Hippies only purchased what they needed in the moment. To their way thinking, if someone else was in need, there would be a supply left on the shelf for others.

I marveled at how two opposing behaviors could both be inspired by this concept of thoughtfulness for others. And although my heart wanted to side with the Hippies, it turned out the Hoarders had much easier and vastly more comfortable lives, while they lasted.

Years ago, I’d heard a story that ended with “fortune favors the well-prepared mind” and the saying became a personal credo of sorts. I can now testify that any form of well-preparedness builds a stronger, more solid foundation and manifests more opportunity. Whether you’re a Witch or not.

Part Three.

It started with the vintage sign Willow found at a thrift store. Carved out of a plank of wood with uneven edges and painted with silvery letters and a pointed arrow that sparkled against the dark stain, it read “Hippies Use Back Door - No Exceptions!”

The three of us thought it was hysterical and Willow hung it by her back gate. She was an Apothecary with a glorious garden filled with sacred and magical herbs that she crafted into tinctures and elixirs under the proper phase of the Moon.

That afternoon at her cottage, we lounged on benches constructed from twisted tree branches that coiled together to form surprisingly solid pieces of furniture, made comfortable with an abundance of pillows handsewn with rich purple and green fabrics that complimented the lush greens and natural hues of her yard. Her garden was a showcase that somehow grew in perfectly organized boxes and rows, at the same time burgeoning with a wildness that hinted at hidden treasures to be found under leaves, and vines that climbed trellises and caressed your arms as you walked among cobblestone pathways. We sat amongst all those layers of beauty and sipped tea as delicate as the fine china cups that held Willow’s concoction.

As usual, Cordelia brought the food. We called it faerie food because it always looked like something faeries would eat in their forest glen, on plates of woven pine needles and bowls fashioned from acorn caps. Delia was an Artisan who created astonishing works, whether they were fashioned from food, paints, fabric, music, or things from nature like leaf and stem or fur and bone. I once watched her coax an injured young raven to alight on her gloved wrist so that she might fashion a popsicle stick splint to its broken wing.

My offering that day was the honey wine. At once sweet and layered with flavors of rose and blackberries, it slipped down our throats like liquid gold, coating our tongues with the powers of clarity and recall of dreams from the night before.

It was the mead that loosened our memories until words spilled from our tongues. Willow spoke of ancestral memory and how we carry the trauma from our grandmothers and mothers lives within our very DNA. How last night she sat at a long table with the women of her mother’s lineage and they blessed her with strength and fortitude and gifts to help her through the most difficult challenges any had ever faced. There were warnings of a looming battle that would change our world irrevocably.

Delia sipped alternately at the tea and the wine and I watched a bee settle on her soft dark hair, as if captive audience to our conversation. For a brief moment, a hummingbird buzzed behind her, dipping its long tongue into a trumpet shaped flower with deep purple striations. She closed her eyes and smiled briefly before frowning. She had dreamed of running through dark woods at night, carrying a precious bundle close to her chest as she was hunted by men on horses, wielding torches with which they threatened to burn down the forest. She ran blindly through the trees and the brush, but the thorny branches parted to let her pass and the whispers of the creatures and beings of the woods helped her navigate her way to a giant oak with a hollow where she hid from those who pursued what she held in her arms. It was something that would save the world one day. But it had yet to be revealed.

My dream was of the ocean. Deep waters where sperm whales slept in pods of five, turned vertically, suspended. Long, dark blue shadows. The haunting song and clicking of humpback whales echoed through the depths and somehow I understood their meaning. The whales communicated about the sacredness of water and how it connects all living beings. That bodies of water have inherent memory and through the energy of water the whales have knowledge of whence water and all life comes. They can taste and hear the memories of water. The whales know of clouds that carry rain, of snow caps on mountains that melt into streams that feed into rivers and eventually spill into oceans. The whales know that all living things are mostly made of water. And not just humans, but all animals and plants. Even inanimate objects, the air, the rocks, and flames contain tiny particles of water. Water is what connects everything. Water is life.

The memory of that afternoon surfaces regularly these days, like a favorite movie you watch repeatedly while cleaning house or organizing. It occurred prior to the First Wave, when we were oblivious to the real dangers swiftly approaching not only humankind but the entire planet.

Part Four.

Those of us who have survived thus far thought if we made it through the first pandemic, that first virus, we’d have seen the worst of it. We were wrong.

Another virus, the Second Wave, hit the humans and killed several million more. Gone in months. No time to recover in hospitals. Millions immediately dead and gone.

And just when we thought we were ready to rebuild, a strain of deadly bacteria that was exposed with the melting ice caps wiped out over half of all creatures on the planet. With the Third Wave, much of our institutional memory and knowledge of how things work was lost.

The Fourth Wave was perhaps the most difficult emotionally for many to handle. This was not an epidemic of typical viral or bacterial nature. It was a pandemic of human nature, specifically greed, fear, and hate, spread by misinformation.

The White Supremacists who peddled that particular noxious soup produced the Fifth Wave. Tried to kill off the people they considered undesirable by tainting the international medicine supply. Their plan backfired and they poisoned themselves.

What they didn’t count on was us. The Witches. The Healers. The Storytellers. The Dreamers. The Weavers. They underestimated our magick and never understood our connections with all life. We reconnected with the other life on this planet and collaborated to heal the damage humans had caused With more than half of our world population gone, it was easier to heal the wounds we had inflicted on the Earth.

While I had isolated from other humans and lessened my risk of contagion, I went deep within, exploring my dreams and what Dr. Carl Jung called the Collective Unconscious. It was through tapping into this shared source that inherent memories were brought forth from our ancestors, that connections to other life on the planet were strengthened, new forms of communication were accessed, and alliances were created.

Part Five.

We have now entered the Fifth Wave. And while the Walkers scritch and scratch their fingers at my front door and along the outer walls of my house, I clutch the heart-shaped locket and think about the healing properties of lupine and the water within that healing flower that connects me to the creatures outside. Are they alive? Does it matter? Water is life.

THE END