Sewage drains, street drains, storm drains, water drains, dirty drains, damn drains, long drains, deep drains, draino drains, sinus drains, kitchen drains, sink drains, money drains, intellectual drains, drainage basins, and basin drains, drain pipes and piped drains, and my shower drain. The drain I stare at every morning as the water pours down, over my head, seeping down through my tousled hair, over my lethargic body, reawakening and revitalizing virtually every cell in my poor, somnolent epidermis, and then swirls onto the tile, into puddles, and finally into the drain. The drain, my shower drain, the source of philosophic enlightenment, the key to my early morning understanding of the universe, the analogy that provides me with the very insights that make a man deep as well as refreshen and vitalize his very soul. Ironic, that the truths of the world can be revealed in its humblest artifacts.
Really, it's not that big of a deal. It's about four inches in diameter, originally of a metallic copper color, since tarnished from much use, soap, hard water, dirt, and natural body oils. In fact it has sort of a green caked look comprised of the various and sundry sediments that have been deposited upon it by some of the most brilliant and ingenious engineering minds that have ever attended Stanford University, and has three screws. The drain is in the second floor shower of Crothers-Memorial Hall-the drain that occupies the class of the shower drains of 2nd floor Stewart-Cleland, Occidental College, and the shower drain of 2451 Trinity Place, Oxnard, Calif. The drains that have heard the secrets, reflections, and cerebrations of many years of contemplation-the trigger of greater comprehension and understanding. In the true tradition of the furniture metaphors of Isaac Sterne's Tristram Shandy , the drain that has been my source of inspiration
Why? Because. Did you ever stop to think that the drain principle is the central concept of the Twentieth Century man? It's our own order out of chaos, our own chain of being.
Yes, my drain, and your drain, and everyone's drain. The potential cognitive revelations are there only to be realized. The water cascades down the nude human body, splattering on the worn, bleached tiles, forming globules, globules joining globules, swirling, joining, separating, puddling and then flowing, flowing down the inclined floor plane and into the drain. Isn't this the pattern of human existence? We are first born into the world as single isolated human globules, only quickly to merge into larger and larger units of people, until we are finally swept up into the great onrush of humanity and lose our individual identity, to die, swept under by the currents of centuries and mankind.
But even as the drain is the catch all for the human predicament, my shower drain is also symbolic of surface reality as man encounters it. Here, this simple, metallic plate, sunken slightly in the tile, is placed so that the water will flow toward it and not collect in the bottom of the shower and collect mildew and algae and soap and hair and things like that. Here it is, just this small round metallic plate, rather unpretentious and unassuming. But it covers up one of the greatest complexes created by man -the plumbing system-the very foundation of domestic living. Intricate, simply complicated and intricate, as a whole battery of pipes form together to make a system just so that simple little thing in the shower called a drain will have a proper outlet. The underlying foundations of our perceptions of the façade of reality are simply marvelous.
The drain also represents the very mechanism of our world, the very source of energy, the operative principle of the movement toward equilibrium. Did you ever wonder what valleys are for? Drains for the water falling on the mountains tops. Ever consider what canyons are? Small valleys used for siphoning water out of mountains. Ever speculate why you are suddenly short of gas after parking overnight at a parking lot? The unrespectable elements of our society pervert the basic principle of draining to siphon gas for their own demented, nefarious, and even bad purposes. All this because of the drain principle of liquid seeking its own level.
Besides all of this, the drain symbolizes man's futile attempt to channel this natural process of "equilibrium seeking" by sublimating it to his own purposes. The drain indicates man's temporary success at meeting a problem and handling it on the short-term basis. Hoover dam gains its source of power from water draining into it. Man cannot forever stop this drain-but as long as he regulates this drainage; he is temporarily in command.
The absence of drains reveals man's failure to meet the challenges of nature. We are draining our coal supplies, and our food supplies, and our man supplies, and our weapon supplies by our failure to regulate this natural drainage. We have failed to adopt the principle symbolized by that little metal cover, sunk into the tile, that holds so many of the answers for this distraught and searching world.
Each person only has so much creative ability within himself. Consuming love is a drain, Greek catharsis is a drain, this paper is a drain. But if the world is a drain-look for your own little four inch sunken metal plates, so that you can at least have your moment to think you are in control.