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The video below is of a small stream called Whiteoak Run on the Limberlost Trail in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park, looking down from the wooden bridge that crosses it.  It's just a simple, unexceptional video of a stream.  Except . . . except for the white circle in the center . . . a glob of foam caught in the current with no place to go . . . spinning about its own axis . . . its passage further downstream blocked by the formation of the rocks themselves.
Below the movie you'll find suggestions about how to use it
as a unique meditation.



One can mine the rich veins of meaning in a dream by retelling it the from the point of view of each of its characters.  You can do the same thing with this movie . . . or, indeed any event in your life. 

I decided to "play the parts" of this movie and started with that foamy disk.  I gave it a voice . . . first person, present tense . . . and didn't try to edit where its ruminations went . . . allowing associations, puns, whatever to come to mind.

I invite you to do the same.  It's an interesting . . . and often useful spiritual practice. 

If you want, take some time to do so now . . . in which case, don't read any further until you've played with the scene in this way.  I wouldn't want what I've written below to get in the way of your own meditation. 

If and when you're ready to do so, just scroll down to what I've written.
THE FOAM SPEAKS

"I'm a foamy disk . . . a little frisbee-like thing . . . but not as durable . . . nor as large . . . maybe six inches across.  I'm really little more than the stream itself:  just water . . . a bit of dirt . . . maybe some bear poop . . . and agitation.  Yeah . . . without the agitation of the stream I just wouldn't be.  It's what froths me into being.

"Also, it helps that I'm caught in this eddy . . . if somehow I slipped out and got caught in the current . . . ?  What would become of me?  Brrrrrr!  I'd dissolve . . . lose my identity . . . would cease to be me.  Yes . . . the eddy is my friend . . . just enough agitation . . . eddy . . . Eddie From Ohio . . . yeah, it's a friend . . . like their folk music . . . they're not really from Ohio, but Northern Virginia . . . like me . . . and they're still spinning their songs . . . me, well I'm spinning for sure, but not contributing anything to the song this stream sings . . .  I just listen mainly . . . and spin . . . as secure in my spinning as an old LP on a turntable . . . or a CD whizzing about much faster.

"It helps, of course, that there haven't been any rains recently.  I mean, if that happens . . . if the rain is hard enough . . . it'll break me apart . . . the waters will rise . . . the flow will increase . . . I'll leave the safety of my eddy behind.  I don't even want to think about it.  No one wants to think about death . . . annihilation . . . particularly if it's their own.
THE ROCKS SPEAK

I'm the rocks in this stream.  I may seem scattered helter-skelter . . . and who knows, maybe I am . . . although I like to think I'm placed in a way that gives this stream . . . or at least this part of the stream . . . its own, unique song.  There is no song for the stream to sing until it tumbles over me.  Sometimes I think of myself as a bunch of organ pipes . . . you know, the big 16 ft. fagotto or the 32 ft. tuba pipes . . . like when I plunge 90 ft. into a pool downstream at White Oak Canyon.  In this video of me, I'm mainly the shorter, thinner aeoline celeste and sifflote pipes that put the sparkles in my song.  Sometimes I create little pools for the water to rest in . . . to store up energy . . . before plummeting over me.  On rare occasions, a bit of foam gets caught in an eddy that I make . . . like that little fellow spinning so madly up there under the bridge.  I feel for him . . . he's so afraid . . . he's afraid of me, I think.  And why shouldn't he . . . I'm solid and he's just really damp air!  Poor guy  . . . he forgets that he's also slippery . . . that the water will take him harmlessly over me as I sing my melody . . . which I do . . . even without the addition of his voice.
THE STREAM SPEAKS

I'm a part of a chorus . . . many, many voices . . . almost beyond counting we are.  I sing my part from this mountain down to where Cedar Creek joins in the melody and we form a larger section of the chorus known as the Robinson.  Soon the Rose joins and by the time we meet the Rapidan, you can hear us a long way off!  Rushing through Orange, my music joins that of Eddie From Ohio . . . courageously, determinedly still singing after their lead singer recovered from her bout with cancer. 

Eventually, for the music score calls for it to happen . . . and it does . . . right on cue. . . we meet the Rappahanock section.  As we flow through the gorge at Fredricksburg, our song is so lovely that people come from miles around to grab a front row seat on the banks just to listen to us. 

Our separate voices now sing as one . . . but don't get me wrong . . . each upstream section has sung its own individual part in this complex composition . . . and if they hadn't, we'd not be singing what we are now.  Onward our song flows until we meet the Potomac that sings its song andante until it meets choruses from hundreds of miles away and we sing our song adagio in the great tidal estuary the locals still call Chesapeake. 

Our song is now the pace of a gentle saunter until we meet and mix with the Atlantic at Hampton Roads.  Once there . . . once we've all arrived . . . we party it up. 

With one, strong, rhythmic voice none of us could have imagined back up in the mountains . . . sing that great sea's ancient  playbook.

From my vantage point . . . which is the surf on a beach along Atlantic's shores . . . a little girl . . . maybe 7 or 8 . . . scoops up some of the frothy foam the wind and salty water have churned up and left stranded on the wet sand.  She paints her face with it . . . and then runs to catch up with her father.  "Look, Daddy!  I have a beard just like you!"  The father laughs . . . and picks his daughter up while her mother snaps a photo she will treasure always.

Poor little disk of foam . . . voiceless . . . fearfully stranded so far upstream.

What it has missed . . . what it has missed.