“And so the urn flows on…”
It all starts in pieces, two or three sentences on endpapers of a night-table book. A smattering of brief voice notes. Spontaneous scratches and scribbles. Days pass, weeks, a month, three. I keep stewing the matter [in a container], gathering ingredients in the pot. Stirring, turning… It’s in this pot we begin. The cave, the clay jar. But given the nature of these thoughts it will likely spill out in a flood and make meandering sense.
Pandora, first woman, she who is endowed by all gods, the enticing gift for Epimetheus. She holds a jar and in this closed container are the swirling and seething secrets, evils. To speak about Epimetheus is to speak about Pandora, both woman and vessel, through whom the deluge spilled over unto all lands.
Here I am, Epimetheus, not that other, my brother, his liver eaten daily by an eagle. I am this one here with Pandora and her jar, inside Pandora and her jar. Inside, a flood.
Pandora, a gift, a coming together with Epimetheus, and the spilling that turns into a flood. A sequence that when typed up or written down seems almost facile, this one thing led to this other thing and then consequently, oops, the breaking of the container, many things spill forth, the watershed moment. Let’s talk about flooding for a moment, string together a couple notes here and there in between the fractures of the vessel.
When I went looking for information on flooding cycles, the Nile kept turning up as most prominent.
The flooding of the Nile occurred by way of the yearly monsoons in the Ethiopian Highlands. The phase of the event seen through the Egyptian calendar: Akhet (Inundation), Peret (Growth), and Shemu (Harvest), with Akhet covering the flood cycle.
The annual flooding was vital for agriculture in ancient Egypt, as it deposited nutrient-rich silt on the land, making it fertile for crop cultivation. The Egyptians celebrated this event as a gift from the Nile, marking it with festivals such as Wafaa El-Nil. This celebration honors the bounty provided by the river and reflects on its importance in sustaining life in an otherwise arid environment.
This is a flood cycle that forms part of the life rhythm of place; integrated into the dynamics of living. A flood cycle experienced by a people’s and a place that speaks of their relation to water and its waterways.
After this calendar lesson, I went hunting for more on what flooding is from the perspective of its beneficial aspects. I stumbled upon the word floodplains; a wide expanse of flat land next to a river or body of water that periodically experiences overflow, typically due to rains.
- Floodplains have an important positive impact on flooding. Flood waters can spread over a large area of flat open land. This reduces flood velocities and provides water storage to reduce flood depths downstream, reducing flood damage risks to downstream communities.
- Water quality is improved in floodplains where vegetative cover prevents soil erosion and acts as a filter for runoff and overbank flows.
- Floodplains can act as recharge areas for groundwater and provide habitat for diverse species of flora and fauna.
In this context, I see ecosystems that express interrelationships with water, land, and sky. A water dance.
Yet, there is complexity here, in its very nature a flooding is a moment of rupture, a crisis “event” when all spills out and intermixes, overwhelms, and clashes. All beings submerged. An influx of rushing water that subsumes it all. Flooding events arise from various causes including heavy rainfall, hurricanes, dam failures, and snowmelt. It is a coming together and over of waters. Boundaries are transgressed, there are no dividing lines in a flood.
In the month of September, heavy rains continually fell in Henan Province, specifically near the Yellow River in China. The persistence of the heavy rains led to the rising of waters of the Yellow River, which led to the breaking of the dikes [boundary lines/containers] that delimited the river’s reach. The flooding was so catastrophic, inundating the landscape, farmland, homes and settlements. Not only did many drown, but the destruction was beyond bounds.
The floodwaters quickly spread across Northern China, inundating around 50,000 square miles (130,000 km²) and affecting millions of people. The flood led to an estimated death toll ranging from 930,000 to 2 million people, making it the deadliest flood in Chinese history and one of the deadliest natural disasters globally.
This is a flooding event as a great sorrow, a crisis, a devastating erasure of bounds, a drowning event. Pandora’s vessel spilled forth all combinations of sorrows and devastation.
As metaphor, flooding also presents us with nuance, one could say this is also the overwhelm of cacophony during certain happenings or events, states of mind when thoughts lack cohesion, excess of information through media like a constant bombardment. Flood does not have to be subsumed to water (definitionally), a flood can encompass a flooding of words, flooding of horrors, flooding of media, flooding of thoughts, flooding of emotions. As metaphor, I can also see the swarms of evil spirits and dis-ease that would forever plague mankind spilling forth from Pandora’s jar.
I speak of floods which have no order, it is a rupture, an inundation of matter and quantity. All things everywhere all at once, but like in all occurrences there are varying perspectives to the flooded moment. There is the sorrow, the devastation, the destruction, the overflow that submerges and subsumes. Then there is the the slow boon of the cleansing, of removing barriers to re-nourish the soil. Shifting the ground, re-positioning. What does Epimetheus tell us about this moment, about flood? It wasn’t exactly water that overwhelmed him as Pandora cracked the vessel and the jar tipped over.
Moreover, what can be gathered, recuperated and salvaged in a flood? The evil spirits spilled out, all the horrors, Epimetheus couldn’t contain them, it was too much too quick. Perhaps these moments of rupture teach us the art of dancing or… swimming amidst the chaos of the flooding event.
In a narrative that has emulated the overarching grandeur of Prometheus, the linear progressivism of this titan, what does his counterpart Epimetheus, husband of Pandora, teach us in this scenario? I read omission as fertile ground for storying with Epimetheus. So I say, the urn flows ever on, outward the waters flow, as there are no details that describe exactly what Epimetheus does, hence, he just is amidst this flood. I see him as pacing himself, slowing down, breathing deeply through what has happened and what is, and from what is, then an articulation of what is his to do can take shape.
Do we let the waters carry us, do we swim through the inundation of waters, things, events, horrors, all the diverse aspects that encapsulate living? Or do we move toward the floodplain and learn to cultivate water gardens, salvaging along the way?
In the span of histories, both reaching back and forward to the present, events of flooding, both tangible and metaphorical, occur. Do we know how to recognize when we are amidst such events when they are happening at the metaphorical level? And what is ours to do amidst these moments in time? When all things inundate our awareness and our attention? Have we each cultivated a floodplain area in our lives to allow for the seeding of these waters to bring benefit as well?
Turning the fractal coin of the matter once more, I look at whole systems thinking. Which is thinking with things as interconnected webs of agencies and events, a dynamic thinking with…
My apprehension here is that Epimetheus is the teacher of whole systems thinking. Yes, I know he is afterthought… Perhaps more than this, he can be viewed as harbinger of thinking with all things as they happen at once. Pandora’s name is all-gifts. Not good gifts, nor bad gifts. All- Gifts. All things intermingled. LIFE. Epimetheus teaches that we must all get comfortable with a degree of uncertainty, and how to life amidst this uncertainty, how to swim in these flooded waters. I add a qualifier to the movement, that pacing is the key that Epimetheus hides in his teaching, which aids in seeing what needs salvaging and what can be let go.
Pacing, moving with the moment so as to allow one’s self to flow with the current, the waves, the great wave that overcomes. I imagine a submersion under the weight of the occurrence, or many leaves swirling in a wind gust, a spiral dance. I like to en-vision Epimetheus like this, the submerged dancer, an immersed swimmer. Through Pandora and the spillage we re-gather and salvage the gems of Epimethean wisdom.
Now I spiral back to Ganymede, the story of the Aquarian constellation. A linked story through meandering ways. The horror of the theft, taken hostage, given immortality before reaching adulthood, the jar, eternal-pouring. Constrained by a divine court to pour, dreaming of the depths, of unleashing the bounds, ever-pouring one. The vessel from which outpours the inky black waters of the starry heavens speckled with jewels, the marker of floods in calendrical systems. Ganymede as an expression of Epimethean embodiment.
In these threaded stories is formed a woven wisdom, of rupture, flood, sorrow, loss, cleansing, renewal; but far seeing and deep like the waters of the starry way. Something about cycles, what is inevitable, what breaks the bounds to reshape the landscapes, something about transformation.
~~~
- Manilius, Book 4.272 (Astronomica, Loeb Classical Library, 1977).
- Aquarius
- https://www.perplexity.ai/search/flooding-cycles-in-ancient-his-JiyYhZqfRqS4SyzG5aXHyg
Natalia Lee 