Sansara (or Samsara) On The Susquehanna

This week we received a lot of rain here in Central Pennsylvania. Much flooding. Besides me emptying the dehumidifier more than usual, nothing serious here on Mount Molumbia. Traces of water around the French Drain in the dungeon. 

Everything has that moist sponge feel. You know, the condition that the kitchen sponge usually exists in...unless you leave for a week and return to find it dry as a bone? Then, you have to re-animate it with some H2O. Keeping me from complaining are photos of California Wildfires.

Like Noah, I sensed that I could head out of the Haus on Thursday on my Trek bike after a while inside. As an aside, it rained so much that my brake pads rusted onto the rotors on my car. When I go in my car on Friday to drive to a microbrewery in Southern York County--I had withheld from doing the trip until the waters had receded so as to not get stuck in a flash flood, turn around don't drown type of deal--I put my car in reverse and pressing the gas pedal, the old Honda Civic warhorse didn't move. I got out of the car to look around to make sure a wayward branch had not fallen behind my back tires as storm-strewn wreckage. Nope, just rust binding metal to metal with rust. Rust never sleeps.

On my Trek, I pedaled down to the Susquehanna River to observe the aftermath of the flood. It wasn't catastrophic but there was a good section of the Columbia Crossing area under several inches of water. It was worse elsewhere. I thought about how a powerful force water is. It goes where it wants. There is a line out of the novel Siddhartha that I read today that the "Water is stronger than stone." 

And how true that is. Without giving away the plot, the river in the novel is a metaphor for world-weary circuitous change as a wheel of the main character Siddhartha. That is termed Sansara in the book, or Samsara elsewhere. The world will wear you down. For good or for ill. 

Being set in India around the time of the Buddha, it obviously speaks of reincarnation but also the cycles that one life goes through. As a Christian, I believe we have one life, and then the judgment (as Hebrews states). Yet, I recognize that each of our lives has many mini-lives contained within. Like me...angry young man to stoical old man.

When starting the novel, I anticipated another long slog like Les Miserables and Moby Dick. I didn't do much reconnaissance on the book. I sensed it was the next book in line and I would wear it down like water on the prose of stones. As it turns out, the book is considerably shorter (along the lines length-wise of Heart of Darkness that I crushed in a couple of days). The pervasive week of rain helped keep me on it, too.

All four of my recently read novels have water as a major theme in the books.  I am going to have to ruminate this for a bit before reflecting on what it means.