There is the flow of rivers, headwaters to delta, the longest rivers in the world: Amazon, Nile, Yangtze, Mississippi. White Nile/Blue Nile. Meander through the bulrushes. “The Sea Refuses No River”

There is tributary flow of sundry ilk.

There is the imperceptible unrelenting, often backwards lazy flow of the bayou, brown like an ugly snake in the sun.

There is the swift flow of the rapids throwing down the cataracts.

There are the cement constructions, lazy river flow. There is one in the shape of letters: “lima” “sierra” “uniform”

There is the energy of wind moving the wide expanses with elegant massive power flow. There is gulf stream. There is air stream. The two are related.

There is the flow of the floe of calving ice, releasing trapped and centuries-stored carbon, changing the composition of the vast expanses. Changes in density, changes in salinity. Nothing remains quite the same.

There is the flow of heat exchange, conduction.

There is circulation flow: pumps, pipes, and hoses.

There is the flow of blood, periodic lunar chart.

There is confined flow in contained hose nozzle-controlled.

There is a natural hose waste flow multiplied and shared by all the people in the world, fed by liquidity. It can go into a bucket, it can go into a pot, it can go into a public works, it can go behind a tree, it can famously go onto a second-best bed in an expensive suite with a Kremlin view.

There is the drifting flow of continents, to and fro. There is the clash of subduction zones. Mountains are like the vomit of orogenesis. Very moving.

There is magma flow in a hot spot, remote in the vast expanse. Once exposed, magma is lava, and it flows too: a’a & pahoehoe, leaving a mark upon the earth.

There is electricity flow in a wire. Turn on the light switch: immediate illumination. Think of a Newton’s cradle.

There are the waves and particles of radiation from the sun. There is the flow of photosynthesis.

There are flowing waves in the air, broadcast and caught with a dial on Marconi’s device. Limber limburger Limbaugh limbos to bimbos, unrelenting for thirty years, bending America’s lumbar like Beckham. Lump it and limp.

There is the information flow through a cable, fiber optic. It fills us with too much. It sows chaotic confusion and lack of knowing. [as Declan has said: “they’re gonna take that cable now, and stick it down your throat” and elsewhere: “it’s undercover around your houses, up your skirt and down your trousers”]

There is talk flow, Forrest to Bubba, back and forth, similar to this awkward word flow.

This could go on and on, ‘mimsy were the borogoves’, but I’ll run it through a sort of nozzle, and play with the adjustments:

There is an expression: “Go with the flow.” Some say it. It gets paid the lip service. It is associated with passivity. It is sometimes considered mystical and very eastern. It is represented many times as hippy liberality, a refusal to take part in decent society, a refusal to work. It is long hair and a beard. It is disrespect. It doesn’t stand upright for the national anthem. It smokes pot, kettle black. Lives matter. It is frowned upon in our America. It needs to pull its pants up. Serious social measures are taken to rid us of this mystical eastern passive scourge.

Decent Americans righteously rebel against it, irreligious and irreverent as it is. Yet a cousin of it, ultimately, can be found advocated in the Christian religions, especially in the ones which fight passivity and call for action. It clashes with the concept of the Protestant work ethic of course, but it can find accord in the concept of grace and in the dubious concept of “handing of one’s life over to Christ.” Literally defined, the word for this “handing over” is actually one that draws ire and derision, inciting and inviting violence: “islam”. (Not many decent ones will remain completely passive about the feelings that I just manipulated and stoked in the dropping of that one simple defining word).

And people talk about it, yes, this (paradoxical within the paradigmatic context) “handing over of life”. Committed people swear by it. What it actually amounts to in practice, I have yet to understand or to truly see. For it seems like the same old self-serving selfishness to me, only “righteous” and “justified.” [But that’s just me. As a gnostic heretic, I do have somewhat of a chip on my shoulder when it comes to this]. [It’s awkward, sometimes, biding one’s time on the execution line for heretics, especially within polite conservative society]. [Dead man walking].

But my written word flow is off again on yet another tangent. Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a mail box. I myself, indeed do advocate going with the flow. It is the way. To me it is the way to go. It is eternal. It is universal. It is beyond time and space. It always was and always will, like the spirits that we truly are.

But, I also see a trap in confusion with “the way,” especially when it is so obvious from my original Bubba Gump talk/list above, when there are so many choices and conflicting flows and ways and means and flows of bad advice with which to go. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” – Hamlet (1.5.167-8). There is almost, seemingly, no way to discern the right way. The concept of “The Sea Refuses No River” and the “We Are All Water” sentiment do offer a bridge to redemptive theology on the matter. Yet, it clashes in a fundamental way. How to know? Traditional authority? The Pope? Formal traditional protest against traditional authority? Institutional?

But reality is that we all must serve somebody. We all must, “at the end of the day” [inane throwaway cliché!] flow along somewhere to something beyond us. This is that which we fear with all our might, all our being, all the while working on the conviction that we can somehow be saved and graced and somehow granted with the opposite of that which we fear in such complicated denial.

People, even the toughest resisters who would never stoop to feminine passive flowing do indeed flow in many lost and circular ways, like the Lost and Old River on the way to Beaumont. Like flotsam, we, all of us, flow on, in on something, one way or another, acknowledged or not. There is a regular flow of fooling ourselves. We call it life. We consider it finite. We look at it as a win or loss proposition. People like to play the zero sum game. People like to project the zero sum game everywhere. The world is like Plato’s cave. Action and initiative individuality and zero sum are shadows on our wall of reality.

Yet, consider that there really is a flow to creation. There is a flow that cuts through all the other flows. There is an uber flow that overrides. Don’t go with just any flow, I say. Don’t get lost. Don’t get old. Slow down. Meditate. Find the overriding flow. See the light. Converse with the one flow in the creation. Flow though time. Flow through space. Flow eternal. Flow out of this world. Find the light. Find the flow that cuts through it all, that is it all. ‘Get on the Right Thing’. Go with that flow.