Death and Bath

Death is life's chief tragedy.

Duh.

Life's secondmost tragedy is drawing a bath, getting naked and stepping in, only to realize you have filled that entire porcelain monstrosity the size of a manatee with water cold as the grave on a December night!

And just as we try to negotiate with death, so we try to negotiate with this bathtub: how much cold water must we let out and waste before we can safely risk hot water bringing the contretemps to a reasonable conclusion.

One feels oneself pleading and arguing with the water to be sensible, begging the hot water to hold out and not suddenly run to cold in the middle of this mentally and spiritually trying operation of mixing the frigid and a delicious warmth which could rival an Icelandic geyser.

The placing of the ass is the critical moment.

The ass must be placed into a zone where gentle confluence has occurred, where convergent plumes of water are gently making peace with one another.

Because there are still zones where only those anaerobic bacteria that thrive around the sulfur springs at ocean bottom could survive, and these could easily lobsterize a temerarious testicle that dared too soon the descent.

In time, one slowly allows oneself to be fully immersed in this War of the Worlds of hot and cold and all parties accept their shared journey towards a sort of homeostasis.

One should feed the cooling spa a dragon-snorkel of hot water from the tap continuously, to maintain the ideal temperature of "comfortable lava."

At least, that's my setting.

I like my baths Icelandic.