EMILE LE BRUN

Rivers of the world, unite

Rivers can stand in for many things, or remind us of many things. For me, they became signs of different phases in my life. I’ve always lived near them. As a child, a literal stone’s throw from the Hudson; as a teen, the Potomac and its tributaries, in whose creekbeds I played and wandered as a dreaming teenager; later, within a long leftfielder’s-put-out-at-home throw from the Amstel. The flow in different directions, but all flow to bays and then to sea. Ultimately the seas meet.

How long does it take for a particle of Amstel water from the plains of the Eastern lowlands to meet a particle of Potomac water that originates from the hills of upper Maryland? Assuming that they ever do, that those particles are not first evaporated into clouds, and circlate somewhere else first, like the particles of sahara dust that are scooped up every few years in Morocco and Libya and carried over to Mediterranian sea to settle like a red blanket over the skies of southern France and Switzerland. This planet recycles and recirculates itself. We humans are part of that recirculation process, too.