Water, Water Everywhere

Take a strip of paper, twist one end of it a half-turn (180 degrees), then tape the ends of the strip together. Voila - you have a Mobius Strip. You will find it is a topological form with some amazing characteristics. For one thing, you will find that simple twist has transformed your paper from a two-sided strip into a continuous band with only one side!

That is what I hope the essays and reflections in this blog will be. I don't want to make or take sides. I want to assume a continuum with only one side. But each stop along my Mobius Strip will present life from a slightly different angle, at a slightly different tilt. One side, but many different views, many different adventures...



Watching all the airline passengers divesting themselves of their water bottles and sports drinks before boarding the airplanes this week - brought an old annoyance of mine to mind. When did people get so thirsty? When did they start feeling the need to carry liquid around everywhere they go? It's as if everyone just finished running the hundred-yard-dash under a broiling sun. Whereas in actuality, most of these people probably were like me - pretty sedentary during the last twelve hours. And I know I haven't felt the urge to drink any water. I would have to force myself. And hedonist that I am, I rarely force myself to do anything.

I know my grandparents never felt the need to carry water with them. The idea of being accoutred with a constant Perrier would have struck them as ludicrous. Imagine some of the famous works of art of the last century. Think of Seurat's pointillist painting, "An Afternoon on the Island of Grand Jatte. Or think of the big Caillebotte scene that welcomes you from a prominent spot in Chicago's Art Institute. The picture is officially called "Paris Street, Rainy Weather" and shows a Victorian couple in the foreground, walking comfortably along the Boulevard under their umbrellas. Those are dignified, compelling people. They certainly look healthy. But not one of them is armed with a bottle of water in a holster. Not one of them is seen drawing and swigging. Imagine how those enchanting scenes would be turned to farce if the women were shown toting flasks of water incidentally augmenting their bustles. Imagine how comically insufficient the men would appear if the bulge in their trousers was always some bottle of Gatorade.

No, our grandparents didn't feel the need to attach that extra appendage wherever they went. And more basically, I don't believe the thought of carrying water around would ever even have occurred to them. The medical books of those days were also filled with advice about drinking plenty of water. But no one would have translated that advice into an injunction to stop and sip some expensive bottled liquid every ten yards or so. And I doubt that human physiology has changed all that much in the last one hundred years that our bodies now demand a steady intake.

Although I suppose I shouldn't rule out the possibility that a large percentage of members of the species homo Americanus has evolved into a state of dire thirst in recent decades. After all, it has been shown that in some instances, evolution can proceed in rapid, discernible leaps. For example, consider the finches on the Galapagos Islands - Darwin's Finches. Several books have been published recently telling how the beaks of those finches can change markedly in the course of just a generation or two - depending on what sorts of seeds become most abundant on the Island. A preponderance of thick-hulled, solid seed pods drive the finches to develop stout, short beaks capable of jack-hammering through those carapaces. More delicate bivalve-like pods drive the finches to develop longer, pointier beaks, capable of prying open the pods - in lieu of the finches being provided with those fancy little tools you get in posh French restaurants to open mussel shells. So yes, evolution might have wrought a similar quick change in human physiology.

Perhaps so many people have evolved the need to sip water at frequent intervals because they are being primed to accept an inevitable status as diabetics. Knowing they soon will be perpetually thirsty, nature is driving them to acquire the habit of hydrating themselves early and often.

Or maybe it's all a status thing. People sling bottles of waterslung from their hips in order that we can recognize them as the "right sort" of people - the sort of people who are properly health conscious. Whereas once, during Prohibition, a lot of people had a hip-flask of gin strapped to their thighs as a symbol of their rebellion against government edicts - now people carry bottles of water as a symbol of their commitment to "taking care of themselves."

Maybe that's why we now experience the constant delay of people stopping to sip from their water bottles. It's everywhere. I rented a DVD of comedian Sarah Silverman's stand-up performance the other night. And bottled water was featured as a necessary adjunct to her going on-stage. Yes, some speakers of old used to have a pitcher of water on the lectern with them. But they only had recourse to pouring a little from it once or twice in the course of an evening - at most. However Sarah Silverman imposed those caesuras of sipping on her performance after every other joke. She unscrewed her bottle of water and drank. It was part of the rhythm of her presentation. It was a pause, a placeholder. And it let us know that she was aware.

And as goes Sarah Silverman, so go all the others. There they are - all the people on their way to work, with a bottle of water in accompaniment. All the people out jogging, or just walking a little briskly, with a bottle of water sloshing along. And then all those people at the airports, having to leave their bottles of life-giving fluid in dumpsters before boarding - just in case one of those bottles should have turned out to be something other than mountain spring dew distilled after all.

But me personally, I don't really think this recent need so many feel to be accompanied by water is due to some evolutionary change. And I don't think it is a display of status either. I personally think there is a much more sinister reason behind all the compulsory bottles. I think it is a sign of the aliens among us. I think it is the invasion of the body snatchers become fact. So many have already been taken over. Their instructions are there in the bottles of water. Every time they hoist a Perrier to their lips and let the fluid enter them - they are steeping their brains in a little more of the alien juice. They are allowing themselves to be transformed. They are transforming.

There aren't many of us left who haven't received our instructions. These bottles of influence are everywhere. They want to make us all carry one of those bottles. Watch out! THEY'RE COMING...!