First: the good Star Trek quote. My partner is watching Voyager (he often does this in the evening, while I sit on the couch and blog) - one of my least-favorite and least-viewed of the Star Trek series, and at some point, one of the characters, Harry Kim, was duplicated, possibly several times. And Tuvak - the Vulcan, you know, like Spock, with the same incredibly dry sense of humor (meaning only funny to others but dead serious with himself) - said, "I have found Ensign Kim. Or rather, one of the Ensigns Kim." Ensigns Kim - how gratifying was this precise, unexpected plural. Like pantsless. I remember my old high school English teacher that everyone loved, Mr. K, explaining it to us: passers-by, not passer-bys. "Hairs-drier?" I had offered helpfully, although I received a smirking semi-scowl. Anyways, I loved Ensigns Kim.
And now, the miracle of warm water and how I discovered that. Let me preface it by saying, as you know, I intend - I hope - this blog to be relevant to others. I blog, as bloggers do, about their daily lives or things that happen to them personally - like the woman who cooked her way though Julia Child's book, or the guy who lived without creating garbage for a year or whatever catchy thing bloggers do for a year and hope they get a book deal over it. But I'm trying to connect the personal with the universal; I'm hoping that my experiences translate to your life, dear reader, in some way - as others have said things that I really identify with. I'm hoping my story below will be a reminder - or guide - or inspiration - or whatever.
First of all, I should say my sign is Cancer, the crab, a water sign; we love to be in the water, as you know from my description of Harbin Hot Springs. However, a great sadness in my life is that I have a kind of lousy bathtub - and no pool or hot tub, either! I get to hotel pools and spas and Japanese baths whenever I can, which doesn't feel often enough. The tub I turn to when I am desperate, because, as I said, it's not very good: shallow, a bit stained (and an icky beige ceramic), small, weirdly shaped (crinks my neck, even with the bath pillow), and for a loooong time had an unfixable slight leak under the drainage hole which means you couldn't fill it too much. Eventually, we caulked it, but it took, like, two weeks to dry in this damp Bay Area weather, and the hold still seems precarious. So I can never *quite* get fully immersed in the bath.
Tonight, I was a little stressed. I take a long weekend this week, and so I have to cram all my week's work (a busy week, the last of the quarter - oh God, will I hit my quarterly goals?) into three days. I worked late. It's a Monday. I was tired from Pride yesterday. There were a million reasons to be a little stressed. Plus - and I don't want to get too personal, not here - but I've been on these rather prominent mood swings, and I tend to rarely find a way to properly and fully relax. Still, I have techniques.
In fact, I have a lot of techniques, but what happens to me - and maybe you - is that when I'm stressed, I tend to have a harder time remembering and/or carrying out actions that will help. Developing good stress-reduction techniques that become habits are very good for this. I have a few I routinely use, including baths. Tonight, I got home and was feeling really awful. But I instinctively moved towards some relaxing actions. I went into the backyard to smell some herbs, which always makes me feel more grounded, connected, relaxed - chamomile alone works wonders. I made some decisions with J about vacation, and we lengthened it, which is something to look forward to. I drew a bath. I got out of my shoes, my work clothes. I lit candles. I put on some Pink Floyd.
And then I went to get into the bath and noticed it was full of little black flakes. Something had fallen, or cracked, or something, but my only choice was to drain the VERY HOT bath to clean the tub out. It was so warm though, as it drained, and I was cold, that I got it. Even warmer feet were nice. So once the ick was all out, I started a bath again, and as I was worried might happen, there was only a little bit of hot water left. Enough to fill the tub about six or eight inches. Not a bath. But I was already IN the tub, and by this point, sitting down, and a little very warm to hot water was better than nothing. I mean, intellectually, I'd have said no, but tactility-wise, it was kind of pleasant. So I got my bath pillow and lay down in this bit of water - which naturally got a bit higher when I laid down.
And you know what? It wasn't so bad. In fact, it was great! Because usually I am all cramped up in this too small tub, and my neck hurts, and I worm around trying to get under water. But this way, all bets of underwater were off. Immersion was not an option. I wasn't going to get there, so I could just stop trying and be happy with the warm water I had. It was strangely liberating.
And then, I realized, there's always the problem of the bath pillow, which really is designed to cushion one's head as the pillow rests of the lip of the tub, but we have a very narrow lip, and the pillow is mostly vertical, and ineffective. However, the water was shallow enough that I could lie flat on my back, head on pillow, and be well above water, breathing-wise. Gee, it was comfortable! I could look up at our really cool leafy-painted green ceiling. I could relax my back. It was the bomb!
But it wasn't like a bath - it was like something else. Like a water bed, only the water was miraculously just a few inches ABOVE the mattress instead of below. It fact, it was reminiscent of the one and only time I used a floatation tank, because so much of you is outside the water. But it was still extremely pleasant, surprisingly relaxing. Far more than I ever thought an eight-inch deep bath could be.
And I realized this was not just a literal experience, but also metaphorical. As Caroline Casey says, everything is speaking to us, all the time. The world is in a dynamic conversation, all the time, and you can either hear it, and speak it - the language of the universe - or not. The cool thing is, in order to hear it, all you have to do is really listen. She was speaking recently of Pentecost - the day in which the Holy Spirit visits the apostles, post-Jesus, and they all can spontaneously speak in all the tongues of man, and understand them too.
I understood my bath tonight. In a new way, I understood the pleasures of water. So many people in the world lack clean water, let alone HOT water (like for cooking), let alone BATH water, a superb luxury. I try to always be grateful for my showers, and my baths. But tonight, I was really grateful, because I had less - not more, but less. It was new. It was something else, and once I became grateful for it, I found myself becoming grateful for all sorts of things. My ceiling. My partner. Pink Floyd. My ideas. My job. The personal and suddenly philosophical conversation I had with a busy co-worker who I really like but with whom I rarely have the luxury of spontaneously, undirected discussions. My mood swings. I mean, sure - why NOT be grateful for your mood swings? It can't hurt and it might help.
So, there you are. You may want to try this minimalist, reductionist half-bath idea. I'm not saying it's for all time. I'm not saying that I don't want a deep tub that doesn't leak; I do. But try it. Try something else, I guess, is the real idea here: whatever you have been doing that works but not as well as you'd like, try a modified version of it that you'd not normally think would be good, and see if it works. In this case, it did. A bathing innovation. Who knew?
And now, the miracle of warm water and how I discovered that. Let me preface it by saying, as you know, I intend - I hope - this blog to be relevant to others. I blog, as bloggers do, about their daily lives or things that happen to them personally - like the woman who cooked her way though Julia Child's book, or the guy who lived without creating garbage for a year or whatever catchy thing bloggers do for a year and hope they get a book deal over it. But I'm trying to connect the personal with the universal; I'm hoping that my experiences translate to your life, dear reader, in some way - as others have said things that I really identify with. I'm hoping my story below will be a reminder - or guide - or inspiration - or whatever.
First of all, I should say my sign is Cancer, the crab, a water sign; we love to be in the water, as you know from my description of Harbin Hot Springs. However, a great sadness in my life is that I have a kind of lousy bathtub - and no pool or hot tub, either! I get to hotel pools and spas and Japanese baths whenever I can, which doesn't feel often enough. The tub I turn to when I am desperate, because, as I said, it's not very good: shallow, a bit stained (and an icky beige ceramic), small, weirdly shaped (crinks my neck, even with the bath pillow), and for a loooong time had an unfixable slight leak under the drainage hole which means you couldn't fill it too much. Eventually, we caulked it, but it took, like, two weeks to dry in this damp Bay Area weather, and the hold still seems precarious. So I can never *quite* get fully immersed in the bath.
Tonight, I was a little stressed. I take a long weekend this week, and so I have to cram all my week's work (a busy week, the last of the quarter - oh God, will I hit my quarterly goals?) into three days. I worked late. It's a Monday. I was tired from Pride yesterday. There were a million reasons to be a little stressed. Plus - and I don't want to get too personal, not here - but I've been on these rather prominent mood swings, and I tend to rarely find a way to properly and fully relax. Still, I have techniques.
In fact, I have a lot of techniques, but what happens to me - and maybe you - is that when I'm stressed, I tend to have a harder time remembering and/or carrying out actions that will help. Developing good stress-reduction techniques that become habits are very good for this. I have a few I routinely use, including baths. Tonight, I got home and was feeling really awful. But I instinctively moved towards some relaxing actions. I went into the backyard to smell some herbs, which always makes me feel more grounded, connected, relaxed - chamomile alone works wonders. I made some decisions with J about vacation, and we lengthened it, which is something to look forward to. I drew a bath. I got out of my shoes, my work clothes. I lit candles. I put on some Pink Floyd.
And then I went to get into the bath and noticed it was full of little black flakes. Something had fallen, or cracked, or something, but my only choice was to drain the VERY HOT bath to clean the tub out. It was so warm though, as it drained, and I was cold, that I got it. Even warmer feet were nice. So once the ick was all out, I started a bath again, and as I was worried might happen, there was only a little bit of hot water left. Enough to fill the tub about six or eight inches. Not a bath. But I was already IN the tub, and by this point, sitting down, and a little very warm to hot water was better than nothing. I mean, intellectually, I'd have said no, but tactility-wise, it was kind of pleasant. So I got my bath pillow and lay down in this bit of water - which naturally got a bit higher when I laid down.
And you know what? It wasn't so bad. In fact, it was great! Because usually I am all cramped up in this too small tub, and my neck hurts, and I worm around trying to get under water. But this way, all bets of underwater were off. Immersion was not an option. I wasn't going to get there, so I could just stop trying and be happy with the warm water I had. It was strangely liberating.
And then, I realized, there's always the problem of the bath pillow, which really is designed to cushion one's head as the pillow rests of the lip of the tub, but we have a very narrow lip, and the pillow is mostly vertical, and ineffective. However, the water was shallow enough that I could lie flat on my back, head on pillow, and be well above water, breathing-wise. Gee, it was comfortable! I could look up at our really cool leafy-painted green ceiling. I could relax my back. It was the bomb!
But it wasn't like a bath - it was like something else. Like a water bed, only the water was miraculously just a few inches ABOVE the mattress instead of below. It fact, it was reminiscent of the one and only time I used a floatation tank, because so much of you is outside the water. But it was still extremely pleasant, surprisingly relaxing. Far more than I ever thought an eight-inch deep bath could be.
And I realized this was not just a literal experience, but also metaphorical. As Caroline Casey says, everything is speaking to us, all the time. The world is in a dynamic conversation, all the time, and you can either hear it, and speak it - the language of the universe - or not. The cool thing is, in order to hear it, all you have to do is really listen. She was speaking recently of Pentecost - the day in which the Holy Spirit visits the apostles, post-Jesus, and they all can spontaneously speak in all the tongues of man, and understand them too.
I understood my bath tonight. In a new way, I understood the pleasures of water. So many people in the world lack clean water, let alone HOT water (like for cooking), let alone BATH water, a superb luxury. I try to always be grateful for my showers, and my baths. But tonight, I was really grateful, because I had less - not more, but less. It was new. It was something else, and once I became grateful for it, I found myself becoming grateful for all sorts of things. My ceiling. My partner. Pink Floyd. My ideas. My job. The personal and suddenly philosophical conversation I had with a busy co-worker who I really like but with whom I rarely have the luxury of spontaneously, undirected discussions. My mood swings. I mean, sure - why NOT be grateful for your mood swings? It can't hurt and it might help.
So, there you are. You may want to try this minimalist, reductionist half-bath idea. I'm not saying it's for all time. I'm not saying that I don't want a deep tub that doesn't leak; I do. But try it. Try something else, I guess, is the real idea here: whatever you have been doing that works but not as well as you'd like, try a modified version of it that you'd not normally think would be good, and see if it works. In this case, it did. A bathing innovation. Who knew?
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