how to think with water 💧
expanding our thoughts to flow through the environment, letting inspiration wash over us with subtle but tangible sensations, writing it all down.
A prompt for you today! But, quickly:
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Sitting with my notebook the other morning, I was staring out the window at the rain as it gushed over the gutter of the building next door & thinking about the way our thoughts flow through the spaces around us.
I wrote, “There are thoughts you can only have at the ocean.”
Then whoosh! the rest of the poem poured out behind it:
there are thoughts you can only have at the ocean (or in your dreams) ocean thoughts, flowing with knowing from so many streams. lake thoughts contain me egg-like breaking open to cup the yoke of my earliest memories. my river thinks through me, moves through me like a thought- rushes past pouring down my body, fast til i am smooth from thinking. a tiny stream comes & goes noticing what i know and do not know. and now, it's raining. an understanding saturates me as easily as falling. "how to think with water" 3/9/25
🌊📝🌊
Landlocked and surrounded by poisoned rivers as I am, I have been longing for the salty kiss of the Pacific. But knowing what I know about flowing poetic with nature, I suspect I’m also longing for ocean thoughts.
So, let’s dip into some oceany knowing and then some rivery flow for our prompt today, eh?
Grab your notebooks & settle in — There are two videos here for two separate prompts & each is between 1-2mins. I recommend you give yourself around 15mins with each of them to write.
My approach?
On the first watch-thru: Write down all your un-censored impressions on the page, let it be simple & literal. Tap in to your senses and note colors, shapes, what you’re looking at. Then maybe what it reminds you of, noting any interesting phrases or memories or associations that come up. How it makes you feel. Just write it all down.
Then: Watch the video as many times as you’d like. Circle anything on the page that feels particularly evocative or shimmery and run with it for the rest of the writing period. See what wants to flow together!
There are two videos to provide you with two distinctly different water-thoughts:
A mountain stream carves a path through the sand & rocks on its way to the Pacific Ocean. You hear waves and wind and the babbling of this little rivulet. [Recorded on a solo retreat at Harris Beach in Oregon, 2021]
The last of the spring ice on the Raccoon River floats downstream slowly. You hear marsh birds and a light breeze. [Recorded a couple weeks ago on our regular walk in downtown Des Moines, IA]
If you write to one or both of these prompts, we would love to read it! Share it in the comments!
Want to work with me live? These two free online workshops will be part of a full week of 24/7 international art making celebrating the Vision Train’s 5 year anniversary! There are tons of amazing free workshops, dance parties and interviews happening all week and this community is LIFE GIVING. Come play with us! All are welcome! Register at www.visiontrain.org
Okay my friends! Have a very watery day! I look forward to letting your words wash over me.
xoxo,
illuminated trickle
meanders
infused with elevated inland tales
journying on to reemerge with its source
slow now
its flow sculps the pathway among the soft sands and jagged earth
drawing toward fast crash cresting of waves
swirling timeless tales of the abyss approaching form.
at this juncture, we meet again
merging
The golf is greener than I expected. Large waves dissipate on the saturated shore. The gradients of colors range from a dark blue sky fading into a powdery blue horizon, touching an emerald green crest of far off water, then mixing with the sand to create a brown wake, crashing with white swells and fading onto the dusty colored shore, all the parts of the whole. Shiny glints of sun reflect on the moving swells, dancing as the wind whispers away the warm sun’s reach. A chorus of waves celebrate with the wind and sun. Glorious dancing of the constant change of universal order! Humans in their soft, fragile skin. Shyly walk the shores; some bobbing through the surf undulating with the tossing waves. Scores of palm fronds lazily float in the Emerald waters. Sands, remembering when they were shells, nestling with their kin, Children picking up intricate iridescent species speckled shores, arranged with seaweed shells and sand.