Playing With Water

I have a friend who loves water, who can sit for hours and watch it coming from the tap, who tries to scoop it up with his hands and who laughs at just the sound of it running. 

This is because of learning difficulties and a chromosomal abnormality.

But I think he may be right anyway. The two of us have spent many happy hours playing with water and sometimes I feel as though I glimpse the joy and beauty that he sees.

The coolness. The shininess. The running, dripping freedom of its movement. Reflections. Distortions. The darkness and the brightness. The jangled mirrors and the splinters of light. The elaborate curlicues of mystery. Well, I told you he saw it differently to us. 

There are colours in there that we might not see. Shapes that come and go without our noticing. Patterns that just slip through our fingers. There's music that we might not hear. Maybe a rhythm that we don't know how to dance to.

My friend understands this so much better than I do. He doesn't fit into the drab world that the rest of us have created. I can only watch him and guess at what he sees. 

I've got another friend plays with water too. She colours it, splashes it, lets it drip and run down the walls. She spends all day shut inside a room with her memories and dreams, conjuring up magic out of nothing. The water dries and stains the paper. She goes to the tap and brings more. It dances and sparkles as she conjures, experiments and casts her spells. She delights in the patterns and movement. 

This is because she's an artist.

She closes the door and steps out into the evening rain. Her head is still full of pictures of lakes and rivers, seashores and marshes, storms and waterfalls. 

He watches the raindrops on the kitchen window and wonders how long till bathtime.

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And, like I promised in my last post, although it's not much to do with water, here is a freaky picture of fungi for you. All I've done is turned up the colour to show you what's hidden from our eyes. Maybe some reptile or bird of prey has eyes that can recognise these colours. Just because we can't normally see it, doesn't mean it's not real.







Take care.