Deluge
Watercolor and mixed drawing media with original short story by Kyle Krauskopf
READ THE STORY
“Deluge.”
“What?”
“Deluge…”
“What are you saying?”
“DELUGE!”
“You can keep saying it, and as loud as you like, but If I knew what you were saying we could move on. However, I don’t. So here we are. Still. What is that?”
“A deluge is a massive amount of water- a flood, a typhoon, a hurricane, a tsunami, a maelstrom!”
“Okay, and how does that pertain to what we were talking about?”
“It doesn’t. You ever think about how water, the thing we’re mostly made up of, the thing we need to keep living even more than we need food, you ever think how two parts of it is hydrogen- something extremely flammable and dangerous to existence?”
“What?! No. No, I don’t suppose I’ve given that much thought. Where did that come from?”
“Haha, I don’t know. We’re by the lake, I’ve been doing some crying lately, I’ve been trying to keep more hydrated… I don’t know. I just find that wild and beautiful. That in the right measure, combined with the right things, something otherwise dangerous, is essential.”
“Alright, alright, I hear you. So you’re saying it’s kind of like people.”
“Huh. Go on…”
“Well, alone, in our pure form- single minded, a person can become extremely dangerous, convincing themselves of lots of things. But, when mixed with the right people- their friends, their family, they have a support system, and come to be more than they are alone. Well rounded. Less dangerous. Essential even.”
“Essential. Friendship is essential…”
“You know how they say no man is an island?”
“No man is a what? Who says that?”
“Haha, I don’t know, maybe it's a bygone expression- but the point of it is that we are all social creatures. We need interaction. Some need it more than others, but we all need it to some degree.”
“Yeah, I completely agree with that.”
“Don’t think I forgot your casual drop of how you’ve been crying- what’s going on?”
“There’s nothing wrong with crying.”
“Did someone say there was? No. Someone- YOU, my friend, said they had been doing some and I am asking the reason behind it.”
“Self- work is hard work.”
“Ah- hah, yes it can be some of the hardest.”
“We are literally made of this same exact stuff and we let the smallest things divide us. Geography for instance.”
“Geography is essentially the framework of culture.”
“Yes, but I’m not saying different continents or anything. I’m saying something as inconsequential as a state or border line- it can make the biggest difference. Hell, even simply being from a different city.”
“Points of view…”
“The human mind is fascinating.”
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“It occurs to me that it exists in many states, just as water. It can be vapid as steam, making no decision whatsoever. It can be rigid and inflexible as a wall of ice. But it can also flow; it can become the shape of whatever situation it finds itself in, listening and learning and bending itself around obstacles rather than in obstination with them.”
“Obstination!”
“That’s all you got out of what I just said?”
“Haha of course not, you just sounded like my great aunt Mildred!”
“You have never mentioned this aunt.”
“I don’t have a great aunt Mildred, I was making up a fictitious scenario. Anyway you’re starting to sound like a certain Hollywood icon and martial arts master.”
“Ahh, yes, but he would say there is no master…”
“…he would. And he would be correct."
“The more you know, you know the less you know.”
“You know the less you know. That indeed covers it.”
“So to summarize what we’ve discussed about human existence and WATER today- they’re basically the same? But totally different? And we don’t know anything about anything?”
“All of that and we’d be dead without!”
“Dead without water or people?”
“Yep!”
“Yeesh, I thought we were just going to get some coffee.”
“They’re both also unpredictable! A person or the weather may just ruin the plans you think you have!”
“You can say that again.”
“Also unpredictable…”
“No!”
“Hahah, I know, I know. Honestly, this is all very enlightened or just absolute tosh.”
“Oh it's certainly nonsense. But that doesn’t mean it’s not valid, or important.”
“I’m hungry.”
“Let’s get some food!”
“Now that makes sense.”