As and when waters rise, people believe they can get their answers, talk to the waters, or are they talking to themselves? Are they called the waters of philosophy? The years had gone by, and people had considered the waters that sprouted out as teachers of wisdom, a university of the fountains or the waters. Philosophers, teachers, and counselors instruct on the world near the fountains. It’s an open place of classrooms; spheres or half spheres of water are brought to class as notebooks on the lectures, and the waters record words from the lessons. Students touch the waters with their minds, and ripples spread across the spheres as an indication of recording. Letters and sentences are written across the surface of the water with thoughts. Perhaps the fountains have different voices for each person, or are they the same? One spray is different from the others; a large one has whimsical twirling shapes hovering, circling, and dancing around the central sprouting waters among spheres and cubes of water. This fountain is famous; the advice was given about family problems, attaining wealth, fortunes, and guidance on who to love. Accompanying pools of water as part of the fountains when answering ripples span out in hues, possibly indicating mood, subject, or philosophy, as answers of which forms, they came with voices heard as if speaking poetry or riddles, visions entered the thoughts of the asker, disjointed words, many not making sense, it was up to the asker to receive these words, to put together what the terms were saying. Waters were companions for people who were alone; they spoke, the water answered them like another person, friendships were created, and deep intimacy formed into father or mother-to-child bonds as the water fountain remembered it’s relationship as of the progressing years. Firing streams of water had become libraries for people asking for knowledge, some wait days or asked to come back at certain times when the weather or formation of the stars is appropriate. To each person, fountains were universal with no limitations.

Imagine sitting on the side of a fountain and hearing the voices of past people, recorded sounds centuries before as the world was, the reason for historians to visit the place. With no written records, books, scrolls, or imagining stones, every minute part of life is recorded and then called up by later generations. Most have a greater interest in images from the past; those of sexual use, on the surface landscapes, are popular. A small amount of water has the same storage capacity as the whole fountain. Whatever new knowledge is given to the fountain continues with that amount of water somewhere else. People say the waters have voices. Waters were taken from the fountains to be companions by lonely people who talk to it; each small amount of water has an individualism that eventually becomes different from its parent fountain.

Fountains dying, is that possible? What are the origins of the water? No pipes or connections to ample supplies of water were ever found. Water ceases, not imparting knowledge or anything. Fountains renew their materials, reconstructing it formed as if it is living things. Some lay dormant for certain times; what reasons, and why? Rumors and questions grow, stories are added to long after the original time when the fountain had shut down, and accounts that evolved are not true. If there are pipes, they grow like branches of a tree or the developing blood vessels of an embryo. Water is the blood of the fountain. Is there death for a rush?

Are fountains individual philosophers that debate with one another? That doesn’t seem to happen for those who have made it a career of observing them. Words of one fountain take audiences from one to another, imparting the concept of popularity that rarely exists in the community of fountains, perhaps meaning that they don’t have personal ambitions, defining they are not egotistical as humans are. It’s been said in legend that when a fountain fades, an old man appears; is he the fountain in human form? Some might appear to be children and elderly women as they depart from where the old fountain was; somewhere else, there is a new one similar to the old one. Perhaps that is how the fountains travel to other places.

Waters from fountains had been found flowing like streams as if they were on a journey; then, where it settles, a structure of gardens and libraries appear, and their apparition people are observed as they seem to belong to that structure. Jets of water attains height appendages of water from the streams as they build systems that no one understands or wishes to believe in. As these waters flow, there seems to be music that comes as if the seas themselves are composing or musicians made of water are playing instruments; each month, new sounds evolve, proving to people that the waters are alive. The stone or wood that some fountains are made of never ages or becomes dirty, people who live around the fountains value old weathered, and worn-out wood, stone, metal, or glass. What has been worn out was and is considered to have had a conversation with the earth, as nothing stays the same because of time.

Robert J. Matsunaga