The Fountain at Flagey

This morning, by the still waters of a pond in the Flagey neighborhood of Brussels, a fountain was dancing in the light. Not with choreography, not with purpose—but with a kind of effortless mystery that only nature and machines forgotten by man seem to know.

A great arc of water sprang upward—like a miniature Big Bang, bursting from stillness into form. And just as in the old stories of the cosmos, each drop flew outward, free and individual, glistening in the air like newly born stars. But then came the wind.

Ah, the wind. Invisible, gentle, and utterly in command. It did not push with violence, but whispered through the air, bending the trajectory of every droplet with quiet confidence. The fountain no longer exploded upward in symmetry—it fractured, curved, drifted. And yet... it was still the same fountain.

Each drop, though appearing separate, was never truly alone. Each was guided, not by its own will, but by an unseen dance, the invisible currents of breath, of motion, of being.

One could say the drops have their own perspectives, their own moments of flight, their own stories—falling at different angles, tracing unique paths through the air. But eventually, every single one returns. To the pond. To the stillness. To the whole.

This is not unlike us.

We too burst into this life, out of mystery, carried by chance and wind and circumstances. Each of us seems separate—glistening, flashing through the air of time with our own arcs, our own identities. We look across the sky and see others, some close, some far, each appearing to move alone. And yet, we are all water.

We are not beings in a universe. We are the universe... being. The fountain is not merely a machine in a park—it is the entire process of coming and going, of rising and returning, of difference becoming unity again.

And in that moment, standing by the water, one sees it clearly: the wind is not against the water. It is part of it. The chaos is not chaos—it is the way. And the return is not an end, but a merging. A remembering.

The drops fall, yes. But they fall back into themselves. Back into the pond that was never separate from them.

Just as we fall—again and again—into the wholeness we never truly left.