My Burmese friends tell me, all wide-eyed and serious,
that a cold shower taken in the heat of day can be deadly--something about the
dramatic shift in body temperature--and perhaps there's a part of me that buys
into the superstition.
A shrink could probably
make hay of it, but I'm not much of a shower person. There's something slightly
nerve-wracking about getting into a little box and being pelted with water of
uncertain temperature.
So, give me a bath.
In cool weather I prefer, in my family's parlance, a long-hot-soaky-bath, with candles and novels, but in hot weather I want a quick cool dip a couple of times a day.
I drop in a bit of eucalyptus oil for extra cooling and soap up with a little Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap (not too much, or it'll sting!), or Body Shop Satsuma, or some of our own homemade melt-and-pour soap concoctions, and I lie back for just a minute or two and dream of juleps. I get out and drip-dry, and then fling St. Luke's Prickly Heat Powder all over myself.
Prickly Heat Powder is a mentholated talc available at Thai groceries in Chinatown (like Bangkok Center Grocery at 102 Mosco St.), and is my summer lifesaver.
But today I'm in the office, and summer casual notwithstanding, there's no tub in sight. So to literature for relief I turn.
First stop: modernism. Ezra Pound, ever the downer, has this to say on the subject:
The Bath Tub
As a bathtub lined with white porcelain,
When the hot water gives out or goes tepid,
So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion,
O my much praised but-not-altogether-satisfactory lady.
Ezra Pound, Lustra, 1913 via Poetry X
Hmmm. As Pound's friend and rival T.S. Eliot put it, "That is not what I meant at all. / That is not it, at all.'' Well, how's about a detour into Imagism, Amy Lowell-style?
Bath
... Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of the water and dance, dance, and their reflections wobble deliciously over the ceiling; a stir of my finger sets them whirring, reeling. I move a foot, and the planes of light in the water jar. I lie back and laugh, and let the green-white water, the sun-flawed beryl water, flow over me. The day is almost too bright to bear, the green water covers me from the too bright day. I will lie here awhile and play with the water and the sun spots....
Amy Lowell, from "Spring Day," Men, Women, and Ghosts, 1916, via Project Gutenburg
Getting better, perhaps, but not quite refreshing enough. Onward into contemporary poetry. Matthea Harvey's Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form is great reading, with deliciously slippery "hinged lines." The title poem is worth reading in full at Boston Review.
And if all that isn't enough, dive back in to J.D. Salinger. Zooey spends most of the novel Franny and Zooey smoking in the tub, and, in a nice bit of reflexivity, readers of his story "The Laughing Man" will find this true: "You could always take it home with you and reflect on it while sitting, say, in the outgoing water in the bathtub."
It's Bathroom Month at AT--enjoy.
(SGH)
Photo credit: massdistraction via Flickr
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
on water usage -- or click my name
www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/naturalresources/components/DD6946r.html
Hello, I too like long baths with soft perfumes;
The color of your bathroom is so original.
I have to do paint in mine but really I dont know what colour I have to choose. Oh, I would like to say you many thinks, but really my English is very poor. Shame on me I have to study all the week end.
May be I should write better Monday !!
Au revoir et à bientôt
I once read that Clark Gable hated baths so he had these huge luxurious showers in his homes. He didn't like to sit in water he had sat in. Another reason, besides Rhett Butler, to admire him.
sorry. baths are too much like making mike soup.
i've been reading this site sporadically and now i officially love it since you know about burma.
ps- it's another burmese superstition that you can't cut your hair when you're sick.
There is nothing superstitious about how extremes of temperature put your body at risk. Anything super cold when your temperature is raised can send your body into shock.
For instance, when you have a fever you should never have extremes of hot or cold like drinking iced drinks or taking a cold bath (I think of those movie scenes where they put someone sick in an ice bath). In terms of drinking, it is the hydration that cools you, not the temperature of the liquid, and for showering it is the evaporation of the water off of your skin that cools you down, not the temperature of the water. So if you want to cool your body down, take a cool (not cold) shower and let yourself air dry.
I'll reiterate my stand on baths being a serious waste of water versus showers. Sorry. Water is a luxury we totally take for granted, and we need to be more responsible about it while we CAN before we HAVE to.
To me, baths - for cleaning purposes - always feel like I'm sitting in a tub of dirty water. For stress reduction, however, they can be a godsend (sorry, Patrick).
(I actually read somewhere that it takes the same amount of water to take a shower as it does to fill a bath - I'm not sure if I believe it).
Personally, I like the japanese soaking tub (furo) - after a cleansing shower outside the tub of course. I didn't/don't like the furo hierarchy though - father, then sons before the daughters and mom - soaking in the same water. However, as a guest, I got to go in first.
this is my good address email
Just signed a three-year lease on an apt with only a shower. The fact that it didn't have a tub weighed heavily into considerations, but now I will just have to go to lots of hammams.
Sylvia Plath wrote a poem on baths, 'Tale of a Tub'. Read it at www.americanpoems.com/poets/sylviaplath/1436.
Leave it to Sivvy. What a genius.
To amplify Patrick's point, taking a 5 minute shower instead of a bath will save over 80 gallons of water per week. If you do insist on taking a bath, consider taking a shallow one.
I love long, luxurious baths and can't think of a better way to relieve stress. My hope is that this contest will provide some ideas for doing something inexpensive to make the ugly NY bathroom nicer.
I did a quick check in my bathroom.
It takes my showerhead 15-20 minutes to fill up the tub. So, if your shower time is less than that, you're an environmentally-concious water-saver, and I applaud you.
In drought-prone California it's always a good idea to take more quick showers and less baths. Besides, your rendition of Bizet's "Toreador Song" would sound so much better standing in the shower as opposed to lying down in the tub. ;)
Instead of "Toreador Song," in the shower, consider the vocal version of "The Minute "Waltz" that Miss America contestants used to sing. You know, "I've got a minute, just a minute, just to sing this little minute WALTZ, in a teh-ehm-po di VALSE..." etc.
On temps and baths . . .
Putting an adult with ah high fever in a cool bath is not just the movies -- my doctor had me do it.
AND I love the body shock of extreme temps...jumping in an icy ocean on New Years Day is an absolutely successful hangover cure. Nordic blood?
It's fun to think about in this bloody heat!
Seriously, when I was a kid, this couple that my folks knew were about to retire, and they were working very hard on their retirement home; the man was very fit and active and he had been shoveling gravel all day long in the summer South Louisiana sun.
So he finally stopped for the day, and came inside and drew himself a bath of cold water. And he died of a heart attack. His doctor said it the cold bath was too much of a shock to his system.
Trust me, when I went to sleep-away camp, I had be forced to jump into this FREEZING spring-fed lake (that was completely opaque and had water mocassins on occasion) on 95 degree days. A healthy person with no physical issues is not going to get sick or die from jumping into cold water. (Believe me, if I could have played that card, I would have.)
I'm quite horrified by the author's indulgence of a quick dip - just a minute or two, several times a day. Imagine how many gallons of water that is. Go to a pool or the beach & get all your quick dips there.
My quick dip is feet only - run them under cold water for a minute - it's very refreshing.
I think I'm a victim of our over-stimulated culture but I always get bored in the bath. Can't read, don't have a TV, music only goes so far. I'd rather knit to relax. But I did buy some lovely ylang-ylang body wash for the shower and this a.m. I used a sea salt scrub that left my skin smooth and soft.
As to temp extremes, doesn't that mean that there should be dead Scandanavians all over the place from jumping into cold pools after schvitzing in steam? But as others have noted, taking an ice cold shower, even on a hot day, is an uncomfortable experience. I prefer a tepid shower, which also avoids the steamy bathroom aftermath.
Having grown up in Minnesota where there are still a lot of people of Scandinavian hertitage with home saunas. Traditionally you use the sauna and then take a cold roll in the snow or cold water. There was never an up swing in sudden death reported from the practice. But if you have a history of heart trouble perhaps not a good idea.
ruth--
We need to get you some waterproof yarn. ;)
But I agree about the bath boredom. The only time I truly enjoyed a really long soak was during a snow day at my first NY apartment (which actually had a spa-tub). Seal on the CD player and a glass of wine in hand while the snow fell and fell and fell. Okay, so that doesn't make me come across so butch...
jimkk--
I want to hear more detail about Scandinavians in saunas and rolling around in the snow. PURELY for health/research reasons, of course.
I manage to read in the tub. (Only once or twice a year, don't worry.)
re-- shower water usage
I still say try the grade-school, science-project approach, and stopper up the drain when you start your shower. If you take fairly average showers, that tub will be nowhere near full (to tub-soaking level) when you are done. Also deends on what kind of (water saving) shower head you have.
But I am not saying totally deny yourself of a bath every now and then if it works for you.
Curtis, it is much more likely that the man died from shoveling gravel all day, and that the doctor was a quack. Think about how many times you have heard warnings to people when shoveling snow.
At Russian banias, LOTS of people go back and forth from the stiflingly hot steam to cold showers, over a course of hours - this, while drinking copious amounts of beer.
Fortunately, I never saw anyone die.
On the old subject of the water consumption of baths V.S. showers, here's an interesting fact:
The amount of water consumed in baths is proportional to the size of the tub itself -not the actual water level. Also, the water displacement is proportional to the volume of your body (Archimedes Principle). So, the smaller the tub, the deeper the water is when you're sitting in it.
My bath of choice is the Japanese soaking tub (I have one in my home) and it definitely uses less water than taking a shower. I'm over 6 feet tall and I can fill it neck deep using only 18-1/2 gallons. The showerhead slides on a vertical rail so can I wash my hair when sitting and the water also fills the tub. I use a stand-up shower just to rinse off after the bath.
An average shower with a 2.5 gallon per minute flow will use about 20 gallons. Furthermore, I can relax (like listening to music or take a nap) for over an hour while soaking in the bath (which stays warm for about 3 hours).
When my teenage relatives come over for a visit, my advice is to soak in the tub instead of taking long showers. In fact, bathing actually limits the amount of water consumed because they turn off the faucet when the hot water gets deep.
Although the shower is definitely good for rinsing off a heavy duty accumulation of dirt, it is not as water/energy efficient for deep cleansing and relaxation that I get from soaking in the bath.
Being an engineer, I take an analytical approach to pratically everything I do. And I am quite convinced that bathing in my Japanese soaking tub is an extemely efficient method for conserving both water and energy. In Japan, where they have to import oil and gas, bathing is the way to go.
Plus, I can always recycle the bath water by using it to flush the toilet.
Cheers-
Danny