Spirit on the water

Richard
Spirit on the water
December 15, 2009

Today I find myself humming the Bob Dylan song, “Spirit on the Water,” from the Modern Times album. You know how it is; a song lodges in your head and you catch yourself singing snatches. Maybe it’s because of the big storm last night that brought flooding—unusual here in December.

For Dylan, the flood is an apocalyptic image—often, the levy broached—but at root it points to Noah and the flood. We remember the animals being led into the ark two-by-two and the rainbow representing the new covenant appearing afterward, but we forget the drowning of the wicked. Maybe because we don’t know where we’d stand.

A few years ago, Laurie and I lived further south beside the Indian Bend Wash, a flood-control device. In our part of the desert, which receives only eight inches of rain a year—mostly during monsoon season in July—water arrives in sudden bursts and the hard baked land cannot absorb it. Rain from mountains miles from here bores down into the Valley, sweeping everything before it. Engineers have forced it into grooves that slice the urban landscape, and the Wash is part of this engineering feat: a twenty-mile spindle allowing water to flow through when it needs to and the rest of the time functioning as a park.

Walking there, I’d think about the great parks of London, Paris, and New York where citizens of every stripe play sport and promenade in areas that are neither wilderness nor garden. Frederick Olmstead described the urban park as the city’s lungs. The Wash, too—a mere 100 yards across—eclipses the strip malls and condo developments that slap up against it. Languorous herons compete with human fishers at lakes that teem with birds feeding on bread scattered by the homeless. They congregate near the public toilets. Elsewhere along the way, Frisbee folk play a sort of golf game, aiming at poles with baskets for the discs.

Crossing the bridge to “Picnic Island,” densely planted with trees and filled with bird song, I’d also find myself wishing for a flood to wash away the efforts of local government. Here, increasingly, officials dice up public space for private use. A sign outside a nearby condominium warns against feeding the private ducks and catching the private fish in its private lake. Beyond it a private golf course elbows the public path off to the side. There are ninety-seven golf courses in the Valley. Was this one really necessary?

Presently, Laurie and I live beside a golf course and are relegated to paths that circle it. The Dylan song is in my head as we pass new lakes formed in sand-traps and under bridges where golf carts usually whisk along. “Spirit on the water, darkness on the face of the Earth,” I hum. The lines are a gloss on Genesis: “The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.” An instant river twists through the fairways, although the level has subsided enough to leave tree branches and human debris—cups and plastic bottles, the odd doll head and pair of knickers—along its sides like a ring around a bathtub.

The sun is brilliant again. A few white clouds billow near the horizon, gray and blackness drained out of them. The sparrows that had taken shelter are furiously sorting through the trash. It’s the moment when the dove returns to the ark with the olive branch, and I find myself turning over the idea of being “born again”—me, the natural world. The Christian take comes into my head when Jesus says to Nichodemus, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again,” and Nichodemus quite naturally asks, “How can a man be born when he is old? Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born?” And Jesus cites Genesis, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the spirit.”

What’s that? We we once little fishies with hands? I hum the next line, where Dylan jauntily juxtaposes earth’s fate to his immediate needs, “I keep thinking of you baby, And I can’t hardly sleep.” Oh yeah, sex and longing, that kind of being reborn. Laurie says she likes when nature gets the upper hand—when the golfers can’t play, and the animals—and us—can wander where we like. I like when nature gets the upper hand in me.