Grateful Friday

A glass of water. Rain and the gleaming puddles it leaves behind. Lakes and oceans and rivers. The invisible vital particles of moisture in the air. The sweat my skin breathes out every moment. The vast sheets of water deep under the ground, cold and dark, out of which trees drink. Every day, every moment they surround me and I take them for granted. I don't pay attention to the simple beauty and the immense luxury of water. I don't think about the thirst of my body except for the seconds required to satisfy it, and don't value enough the feeling of well-being that comes with satisfying it.

So, today, I'm thankful for water -- for the practical magic of evaporation and condensation that forms clouds in the sky and squeezes them onto the earth; for living in a place where water is not scarce (not yet); for having a faucet out of which water pours day after day without my having to work for it; for the fact that the water is safe to drink; for the filters that make it taste good (talk about luxury); for the primordial waters above which a spirit, the story tells, hovered long long ago, and from which all of life has come. Depending on your definition of "spirit" and "long, long ago" this can be a literal as well as a metaphorical truth.

There's that cliche but irresistible question, what animal would you like to be if you could be any animal(ah, reincarnation and its surprising temptations!); my answer is, a whale. It's because of the water, being able to swim in it, feed from it, feel enveloped by it, no matter how big you are, as if by a hand. It's because of the way light travels through it. It's because of how deep silence there can be.