Words like stones and no need for songs

Speaking to Ata’halne was like throwing stones into a boggy old water hole. Without resonance they were gulped down and gobbled up by the stale water. Each time her words to him hung a little longer in the air as if waiting for an answer, even a short and tiny one. Then, when none came, they drooped, fell and were lost.

It was different when she spoke to Aditsan. The stones she threw to him caused cascading droplets of laughter easing out in happy circles around her words.

She had studied water in her biology lessons and knew that, when frozen, it was made out of connecting crystals in different shapes and clusters. Experts could pinpoint the source and origin of water by looking at their forms.

Comparing Ata’halne’s stale water hole to Aditsan’s lively lake she wondered, whether her words somehow changed the water. Or was the water changing her words?

 Perhaps the difference had to do with the stones she threw? They were, maybe, too big for the waterhole or had been thrown too forcefully stirring up mud and unbalancing its shallow water? She could use pebbles instead, rounded and shiny words that just skipped the surface.

 On the other hand, she loved spontaneity, throwing words freely, near carelessly, into a large pool and watch them spinning and flipping like acrobats.

And if the whole waterbed were filled to the brim, would this make a change?

 In her valley rain was scarce. Storm clouds were forming all the time, but mostly dispersed into a dull sky. No hope either that the monsoon winds would bring the much needed rain, for they were held back by an imposing mountain range that surrounded her life. Over the years she had found a few steep paths beyond their intimidation and reached the sunny lake of Aditsan, where she playfully threw her words in and watched them fly with ease like glittering flying fish. For at once she felt she could breathe easier and enjoy the sun. Her skin lost its pallor; her hair gained elasticity and a feeling of wellbeing invigorated her.

It was the moment when she begged Aditsan never to stop speaking to her, as she loved the echo of her words in his teasing voice. Talking to each other felt like an energetic ping-pong game, stroke upon stroke, words in and out of control, yet in the frame of laughter.

Thinking back to the water hole she did not feel the urge to throw any more stones; instead she held her words back and swallowed them. The best way to deal with long silences, she decided, was to get as far away from reality as possible, to a place like a bookshop, for example, where you can hide in dark corners and emerge into the very essence of books. Then words become alive without having to be thrown. All those unspoken words.

As by accident, she came across Emoto’s research on ice crystals showing that consciousness was able to influence the structure of water. She took several slow and deep breaths. Did this mean water could respond directly to people?  During an earthquake, she read, crystals had reflected the panic and also the later recovery. Tap water had formless crystals until it changed when a group of people sent intense loving thoughts into it.

Then the words she threw like stones might have an impact on the crystals in the water hole? Could love do the trick, words spoken with tenderness, a stone thrown in an impulse of forgive and forget?

She studied Emoto’s book of crystals and was surprised about their perfect shapes; all tiny snowflakes in the image of the flower of life and in an astonishing symmetry of perfection.  She now saw water as a mirror to the mind.

Most of our body was water anyway. Maybe there was an energy field, somewhere, to help with communication? Words spoken, or imaginary stones thrown, could achieve much more than a flip or a plunge, but influence the substance into which they fell?

Speaking to Ata’halne had been like throwing stones into a boggy water hole. Singing to him might change it into a crystal clear pool. 

The thought of the sunny lake of Aditsan left her nostalgic.  With him words were effortless. There was no need for songs either. Especially for someone like her, who could not hold a tune.

Years went by. Everyone was talking about global warming, a subject that left her cold. For her the big freeze had set in long ago.

The boggy water hole had frozen over and the stones, or words, she had thrown in, were lying idly on the surface, untouched and unheard. Ata’halne had gradually lost his sense of hearing.

Whatever she said to him had to be repeated or written down. Her patience was tested, for he refused any mechanical or digital hearing aid, and on the whole, ignored technical things, even phones.

As Aditsan had moved awayand taken the lake scene with him, her life became lonelier. The mountains around seemed to close up on her, and most of her days she tried escaping their shadows. Spending time by Ata’halne’s frozen water hole she was bending and colouring the past through the prism of her sadness. Occasionally gulls came settling down to chat or preen their feathers. Fresh east winds ruffled up the sky and opened patches of blue, a blue, she observed, had lately increased in intensity turning from a pastel colour into a deep azure.  At times the sun managed to break through the mountain rifts leaving a pattern of scattered rings on the ice.

When the wind blew in the right direction she could be heard singing to the ice crystals in a high-pitched old woman’s croak.

There were her memories of the past, the words she had spoken to Aditsan that had come alive  and the words to Ata’halne that were lost. There was also something beyond:  what has been said and then what she would like to have said to Ata’halne, now that he had had time to reflect. It was remembering but also imagining. She thought of a conversation, where she gave herself the best lines, resonant lines of taking the initiative to open his heart to her, to be, in spite of his habitual solitude, more communicative and caring in the need for each other. The indictments of those lines were all the more unanswerable for their emotional outpouring.

At home she received a phone call from her daughter, who, many years ago, had left to make a better life for herself, away from the valley of shadows, the enclosure of mountains and the barren land.

She told her mother: “Ashante, your granddaughter is coming to see you.”

An independent and self assured girl Ashante was undeterred by the long journey, eager to meet and getting to know the grandparents she had never seen. Ata’halne was informed by a written note. When opening it he slowly inhaled the smoke of his carved eagle pipe, hesitated, and quoted in a deep voice: “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our Children,"

 When he first saw Ashante face to face, he was left speechless, but there was no need for words to put his arms around and holding her.

The girl had brought him a present and presented it to him in a silver box with his initials engraved. He became agitated, when he found out it was a modern hearing aid and wavered between acceptance and rejection. His politeness, however, gave way and he thanked Ashante for “this most unusual gift”.

With her help he very quickly learned how to use it and to his amazement long forgotten sounds suddenly came back into his life. It was like finding his way home with a powerful torch.

The old woman, still sitting by the waterhole, had noticed a thaw. Ducks and geese had arrived in pairs and were splashing and diving. Even a couple of swans made it their home, swimming in majestic circles and boosting its ornamental value. These vivid birds circling among the reeds seemed to be there for her benefit alone. It was as if they were striking up a picture whose meaning only she was supposed to guess, as if they were there only imaginary and to be watched as to play a part in a story. She never was sure if she really was seeing them, or if she somehow was lifted into some strange dreamlike surroundings.

 By now she had stopped to throw stones into the water for not disturbing her friends, the birds. Instead she threw them chunks of old bread. She also kept on singing, as she felt the ducks liked the rhythm and melody of her songs not minding the odd wrong note. She spent hours with them by herself, chilling out, and never got tired to watch. They flapped through the air and landed heavily on the water with their flat orange feet slipping and sliding all over the place. She saw them clowning around, some on their bottoms, which made her laugh, but they were quite serious in what they were doing. Watching the ducks gave her a happy warm feeling and it hit her that she had not felt happy like this for a long long time. She talked to the ducks and also to the geese, but when the geese were flying, they were flying always to another story that had nothing to do with her.  

Conversing with animals, she felt, was so much easier than with people, who show so little about themselves. They lie submerged, ice floats, their visible sides projecting cool and white, their dark and inner thoughts kept hidden in the depth of their mind.

 Content in the company of the birds she looked up to the sky-blue space above and, for the first time, noticed the magic of the mountains, their tops dipped in the orange glow of sunset. It made her think about the transience of life, the flash of a firefly in the night, the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. While the last light fell over the water hole she sat cooling her face in the wind and pitied Ata’halne for his dullness, his lack of appetite for life.  He showed no interest watching the ducks with her. He had buried his own words and had let her words drown. He did not know where she was and did not care.

This was the moment, when she heard a noise. Ashante was walking next to her grandfather towards the waterhole. When they came into view, she noticed they were holding hands. They were laughing and waving their arms to her. And hearing Ata’halne calling her by her name she answered.