The Value of Water

Today's view from the ground: New York, NY

"The highest good is like water. Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive. It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao."

- Lao Tzu

In the above photo, an untitled Mark Rothko painting hangs in a chapel of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in upper Manhattan.

I enjoy New York in many ways. It appeals to my appreciation of geometry. Manhattan Island seems naturally shaped to hold a city, although it required some alterations. Its few inperfections in this regard add a welcome character, such as the breeziness of Carnegie Hill, the overlooks of Fort Tryon Park, and the fact I keep getting lost in the Lower East Side because I forget how far east it goes.

My previous urban roost was Pittsburgh, and the geometry was far more complex. It is a very four-dimensional city, constantly moving and shifting forward, across, up, down, and through time. The uniqueness of each street and corner, every broad tree and squat house, stands out amidst the terrain and yet never betrays the original shape of the land it occupies. My mother's writing on this subject is so eloquent and poetic that I will not try to match it. Suffice to say, Pittsburgh has far more hills and valleys than New York, not allowing nearly as many right angles as Manhattan. Their one noted similarity is that their shapes are dependent upon water.

Beyond the non-negotiable reliance that all life has on it, I feel I have a special connection to water. It is the subject of the first dreams I can remember. I am rarely happier than in the sea, near a spring, or (if necessary) under the shower. Its fragility and power still astound me, especially after the number of hurricanes, tsunamis, and floods I have observed. I drink more water than anyone I know. I cannot imagine not being near a natural occurrence of water, and I have noticed my own depression when I have been away from it. Water has no geometry; it cannot be contained. It is stochastic and pure, sometimes the only remainder of the wild and random natural world in places where it has been all but abolished.

In my new life in New York, where natural and artificial channels of water are always in the thoughts of citizens, I have taken to studying the natural sciences. After years of study and work in the social sciences and liberal arts, I have felt my shortcomings in this area (save medicine) and want to rectify that. I love the feeling of emerging from the veil of ignorance and finally understanding how things work around me. Since I am bound to see much less of the natural world for a while, I may as well have it in my books. My current job makes it easy, as I work in a science academy. I was hoping to audit a course on aquatic chemistry this fall but was disappointed to learn that it had been cancelled because no one had enrolled in it.

To whet (not wet) my appetite, I took a field trip to the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, a massive stone and bronze masterpiece overlooking Morningside Park at 112th Street. It is one of those buildings of faith that tends to inspire awe in anyone regardless of their penitence. Its stately Gothic nave, the longest in the country, stretches from a picturesque rose window facing west to the niche-like chapels behind the altar. I used to find little places to hide and do my homework when I was a student at Columbia. The bare rock alcoves were always quiet but never silent, always dark but never without light, much like water.

A few weeks ago, an exhibit called The Value of Water opened. It is a multimedia show spanning the entire nave designed to remind people not to forget the importance of water despite its ubiquity. In the exhibit's own words, water "is not just a precious resource but a sacred creation." Indeed, no religion fails to place water at the center of its values. The space is the perfect place for such an exhibit, as both the church and water seem to elicit an aesthetic response that bypasses cognition and goes straight to our core. It changes us in a way we can't describe or even know. It is something that makes no sense while nothing else would make sense without it.

I looked at a waterfall projected on one of the church's robust majestic columns, primitive paintings of icebergs, and several different depictions of drops (nearly all untrue, as water forms a sphere as it falls). But I was somehow captured by the image of three Mark Rothko works hung ridiculously high in one of the rear chapels. Each piece, untitled as Rothko preferred, was a dark mass of blacks and blues. I disliked their height at first but they did capture the texture of the paint, something often lost in the artist's stark representations of color. The viscous nature of the oil made each painting seem like a sea in itself. I did not think too much on this trick of light as I walked back to work. But for the rest of the day, I noticed every body of water in their free forms - splattered on the street, blown from a hose, resting in a cup. Each body seemed more like that strange definition we give them - a body, with its totality and independence.

Then I thought more on the name of the exhibit. The Value of Water. The element (meant more spiritually than scientifically; I know it is a compound) still needs to be framed in our overdeveloped visions of wealth, like "resource management" and "human capital." I wish it could not be so encoded in human terms, but water has a way of distingushing itself to humans when they have too little or too much of it.

I wish it was safe to go to the banks of the Hudson under Riverside Park and dip my feet in the water. I wish everyone could see and feel it with respect and awe. I would love to share the feeling I had when I was first afloat in a great sea, no land in sight, watching the waves rise and fall like the swirls in Rothko's painting. Nothing anchors us in the world from which we hail like water. It's incredibly powerful for such a simple trick of chemistry.

That's the view from the ground.