Water Makes a New Path

I watched an episode of a murder solving show once, one of the ones where the audience is supposed to want the detectives to hook up. Worse, one of the ones where the audience is super comforted by the murder show, I think the term is cozy murder or cozy mystery. Calling it mystery is a poetic language choice that lulls viewers into forgetting a human life has been sacrificed for their entertainment. But that’s a rabbit hole for another day.

Today I want to focus on how our macguffin victim died. Alone. In the shower. Undiscovered for days. In a city and apartment building who didn’t notice a shower running nonstop for days. The shower stayed on that whole time. Pummeling the deceased’s body in a perfect array of watery projectiles.

The fascinating shard now embedded in the back of my brain for eternity is the forensic consequence of a human body being bombarded by uniform streams of pressurized water continuously in the same places every day for a week.

It brings about my favorite line from Memoirs of a Geisha (which I have to Google so I don’t misquote): “Water is powerful. It can wash away earth, put out fire, and even destroy iron.” Which was adapted as ” she told me I was like water… Water can carve its way through stone. And when trapped, water makes a new path.” 

I spend so much time in the shower, it is reasonable to fear I will die this way. 

But I think I admire water and its power so much that I wouldn’t mind.

Still from the film Memoirs of a Geisha.