The Woman Who Loved Water
by John Olson
I hear the woman upstairs running water. But that's incorrect. I should say the woman upstairs is running from water. She loves water. And water loves her. She loves cooking and doing dishes but especially running water. She runs water all day doing dishes, doing laundry and taking showers. This has been the pattern for years. Running water. Loving water. And now the water is in love with her and chases her all over the apartment. She barely gets any sleep. Water doesn't sleep. Water occasionally sleeps in ponds in the forest, but mostly water is busy doing other things, like running onto sand when it becomes an ocean and grows deep and restless or tumbling over rocks in the mountains when it comes bounding down from the regions where men dig into the earth seeking gold and silver. And now when water takes the form of a current coming out of a kitchen tap or a bathtub faucet and helps with cooking and getting clean it has been so loved by this woman that it awakened and turned ferocious as it sometimes does and chases the woman around her apartment. And sometimes she laughs and sometimes she cries and the water comes out of her eyes and moves slowly down her cheeks humbly and accepting as it is when soaked into mops or boiling in a pot and rising out of this world as steam.
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I'm thirsty! But I don't dare drink now because I'm laughing too hard, and would choke. Probly to death. Oh, help!
Excellent.
So original, love this *
Great images, both visual and auditory. *
Why does this remind me of Duchamp ? Enchanting and deftly clever. Lovely stuff from one who adores water too, though differently :-))
Thanks! I love Duchamp. He's a seminal influence.
Great work, John.*
I knew about a *real* woman who loved water. She saw something about a bout of boutilism (or something) on TV, e coli in meat or something, and she just had some meat, so she called her doctor (whose home phone number she had -- I imagine he was well aware of this woman and who she was, whom I picture being in her mid- to late-30s, rather than her early 20s), and he told her to take two aspirin and drink as much water as she could, so she took a gallon jug (or the equivalent) and kep going back to the tap and refilling it, and she drank so much water that all of her internal organs failed, she died by throwing off the osmotic balance of her body, before I heard this story I didn't even know what it was, I had never heard of it.
I am not making this up.
Yikes! I've never heard of such a thing either. Drowning from the inside out. Thank you for sharing this; it adds a nice macabre element to the story.
You're welcome. You fucking (fellow) freakshow!