PHILOSOPHY
Why Some Battles Aren’t Meant to Be Won
Entropy and rising water spare none of us
“I’m fixing a hole when the rain gets in and stops my mind from wandering” — The Beatles, Fixing A Hole
The water’s rising.
That’s not new. I’ve been living in this house in the south of France for close to three years now, and it’s the third time water has come pouring in through a hole in the thick stone walls.
“That leak’s back,” my wife said, a note of panic in her voice as she spread out towels on the floor of our downstairs bathroom.
The house sits a little below ground level, and a century and a half ago when they built the place, they didn’t bother putting in much of a foundation. It’s a big stone block that sits on bare soil, and if the climate here wasn’t so dry, it’d be flooded all the time.
Nothing for it but to go out into the rain and see what’s happening.
Nothing to do except stand under ten thousand cold blows of water, squinting against hot blue veins of lightning crawling across the thundering sky, watching the water bubble up from the saturated soil, right where the pipe leads down from the gutter three floors above my head.
