Water Water Everywhere
Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner more than 200 years ago and it is considered one of the most famous poems in the English language. There is so very much to unpack in this poem and even its title for me. The obvious place to start is that my name is Marin and yet it was not my birth name and I am not in the least bit drawn to the sea by my nature. That set of contradictions alone could take me a lifetime to sort out. I was born with the name Prosdocimi, which is a Latinized form of a Greek word that means expected or looked for. About the only inference I can draw from that is that my father expected a lot out of life and his three-continent life drift bears witness that he had a natural or learned nomadic tendency. He went from Europe to South America by necessity (escaping war-torn Italy and his family’s fascist ties) and then chose to drive himself to marry upward into North America on the wings of my mother’s liberalism, from which he sought his fortune, over and over again. He changed his name to Marin (his mother’s maiden name) which is Romanian in origin and means “of the sea”, which is geographically appropriate for his origins in the northeast corner of Italy, but more strange than not since Romania’s only access to the sea is a small coastline on the Black Sea, which is barely a sea. The famous Seven Seas of the world do not include the Black Sea, probably because during the ice age it was a freshwater lake, but the breakthrough at the Bosphorus has gradually turned its waters more brackish than not. Today, the Black Sea is at the heart of the East meets West interface as epitomized by the Crimean Peninsula that juts into its northern shore, so no less a source of controversy.
The Coleridge poem is about a man who captains a ship through the barren and icy waters of Antarctica and follows an albatross out of the ice pack to safety only to then kill the albatross and thereby destroy his ship. The metaphor in modern society for a weighty psychological problem is that of an albatross and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner would have us believe that the burden is one of feeling unworthy of salvation. The Mariner is not sea captain enough to avoid stranding his ship and crew in the devastating ice of the South Pole. He is either brave enough or foolish enough to tempt fate by entering the unknown, but he needs the help of an external Deus ex Machina to extract him from his dilemma and deliver him from the perils of the icy sea. The albatross, as well-meaning as it may be, is the object of his ire because he is disappointed in his own failings and must therefore escape these horrific feelings of inadequacy by lashing out at and killing the albatross, despite the fact that it is the very vehicle of his salvation. It is an all too classic tale, the tale of the tragic figure who could choose to see himself as Teddy Roosevelt’s Man in the Arena, but instead sees himself as Captain Ahab of Moby Dick fame.
The analogies of the three stories by Coleridge, Roosevelt and Melville are unmistakable. If nothing else, they are all narrated in a messianic way. Call me Ishmael, but the meaning is thick enough to cut with a knife. Ishmael was the son of Abraham, the progenitor of mankind (since he is of Hebrew, Christian and Islamic heritage, that makes him pretty much representative of all of mankind). While Ishmael is considered to be a prophet of God and is the founder of what we now know as the Arab tribes, he was also the one cast out by God to allow the descendants of Abraham through Isaac to “inherit the Earth”. He was the infamous second son who was not destined to become the primogenitor of the favored people. If there was ever a reason to feel unworthy, that must certainly be at the top of the list. But the world is populated by both first and second sons (and daughters) and they too must have a context within which they can strive and prosper. Roosevelt gave us that context that it is the striving and not the winning that matters. Coleridge shows us what can happen if one does not value oneself adequately to accept the assistance of good fortune in one’s endeavors. And Melville then shows us quite starkly the self-destruction that comes from being haunted by one’s failures rather than energized by one’s righteous efforts.
Now that was one of the best rabbit holes I have ever wandered down, but allow me to reemerge. “Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink,” says the narrator for the Mariner. The world’s water supply is, indeed, vast, but 96% of it is salty and thus cannot quench man’s thirst. The irony of the abundance of something so vital to existence and yet so unavailable for consumption is quite poignant. Success and salvation abound, but too few avail themselves of the most obvious source of succor, the sense of pride that comes from simply being in the arena. My arena of the moment is my garden and it too needs water to survive and thrive. The landscape here is naturally dry and my predecessor on this property was wise enough to plant mostly cacti and succulents that are drought-tolerant and need only minimal water to survive. But no one plants and nurtures a garden to survive, we all want them to thrive.
I have a 24-zone, three-program irrigation system that I have tuned up with the help of a fellow named Andre. Should it worry me that the universe has seen fit to give me my Ishmael in Andre form (Andre was the name of my absentee father who must be akin to my personal life albatross or white whale)? As I strive for botanical perfection, I am like Norman Maclean and am haunted by waters. We all know that the West is in mega-drought mode. We have seen the diminished Lake Powell and Lake Mead reservoirs as well as the trickle of the Colorado River. My monthly cost of water now exceeds both my electric and propane costs. My Ocotillo at the entry is the canary in the coal mine of my irrigation system. It tells me that I may be watering my cacti and succulents too much while just barely quenching the thirst of my newer flowering plants and ornamental grasses.
So, this morning I decided to focus on the instrument of my watering salvation and went into my Hydrawise watering app. I dug in and made modifications to keep the watering cycle solid and regular in the places where the flowers bloom and significantly curtail the watering time for the areas dominated by cacti and succulents. I did this, coincidentally, on the same day that my sister Kathy is bringing over a succulent expert to give her daughter-in-law (and the rest of us) a lesson on care and maintenance of succulents. She lives within my microclimate (that is to say, within the bounds of Hidden Meadows) so if anyone can tell me if there is too much water, water everywhere, it is likely she.
Water as life and water as simultaneously salvation and destruction are powerful thoughts for a Sunday morning. I believe in the Man in the Arena approach to self-appraisal, so I will simply state that trying to get the water balance right is not going to undo my sense of self worth. It will be my albatross in the best way and not in the burdensome way. The albatross is the hawk of the seas and thus, my chaparral-soaring hawks are my symbolic albatrosses. I will move from water water everywhere to water only where needed and the hawks will uplift me rather than haunt me in my gardening inadequacies.