welcome to the watering can

a meditation on repetitive motion

Watering plants, strolling the familiar path from my house to the park and back, rolling a pencil between my forefinger and thumb. Dishes clutter the sink, don’t think, don’t think. Water, scrub, rinse. 

There’s a magic, a spell cast through repeating your movements--one you can’t find any other way. It’s why I like fastpitch, kneading dough, paddling across the glassy surface of a high mountain lake. 

But I lost the motion. Forgot the beat. Let the rhythm leave me behind. 

I went to bed one night in a still-sweltering October and woke up in the softened damp of March. Accidentally wrote “2019” at the top of a page begun in 2022. Where did the last three years go?

Clear the fog; see your progress. The path rolls on behind you; the path stretches ahead.

I spent the past five years furiously writing: weekly essays, research papers, a thesis, magazine features. Words drip from my lips if you ask for a story about someone else. 

But my story?

Dried up. 

I’ve spent months wondering what I’d write about if you took my assignments away. Would I write at all without an editor tapping his wristwatch, waiting? Would I find words spilling from my fingertips without a paycheck on the line?

Dried up. 

You can’t pour from an empty cup. You can’t drink if the well is dried up. 

But you can hike to the river, dip your toes in the rush and slip in where the water runs cool and clear over rocks. You can carry water where you need it, if you know where to look. 

If you have a watering can. 

the watering can is my attempt at finding the rhythm again, clicking the castanets until I catch up with the band. 

the watering can is a commonplace book, a placeholder, a reminder of days that otherwise go by much too fast. Like my summer ritual of pacing the back porch and sloshing icy tap water over the sweet potato vine, the trailing petunias, the rosemary and lavender and lemon thyme; this is a chance at refreshment. 

the watering can is my place for exploration—a form for finding my voice. 

This is my repetitive motion. This is my moving meditation. This is my reminder that sometimes the well just needs a bit of a pump, and maybe it’s not all dried up. 

Stay here with me. We’ll sit in the garden, pulling weeds up at the roots, admiring the hum of life you can only hear if you turn the soil, plant the seeds, and bring the water with you. 

Thank you to Dan Hunt, Caryn Tan, Jude Klinger, and Cams Campbell for the feedback on this piece. And thanks to Foster.co for the nudge that got this whole thing going.