ONE WHO DOES NOT LOVE WATER
DOES NOT LOVE HIMSELF.
Strangely enough I actually am often dispassionate on this blog. Really, I sometimes am. Sometimes I treat a subject, despite its ramifications, in a scholarly and unemotional way. Sometimes the subject matter lends itself to that.
This is not one of those times.
I could tell you, in a merely informational way, that more people are killed by unsafe water than all the violent crimes and wars in the world combined. I could tell you that 5000 kids die every day from unsafe drinking water. However, to be brutally honest, I am much more disturbed by the contaminated water itself than by the people drinking it. Humans killed by human-polluted water is what you might call collective payback. Humans caused the problem; humans die from it, makes sense to me. Humans polluting the water to begin however with is more in the nature of a crime against existence.
More to the point for most people who read this blog, I could tell you in a neutral factual way that the average person reading this blog will flush 25 gallons of previously clean drinking water down their toilets every day. They will use something on the order of 3-6 gallons brushing their teeth. They will use around 20 gallons to take a bath or 40 gallons to take a shower - again, previously fresh clean drinking water that goes right down the sewer pipe. They will use 14 gallons to run their dishwasher, and 50 gallons to run their clothes washer. Landscape watering, driveway hosing down and car washing can use hundreds of gallons on each occasion. Were I merely presenting you with some information in a neutral, uninvolved way, I might just leave it at that and leave you to do the right thing.
However, I am not neutral, I am not dispassionate and I am not uninvolved. I am angry. Very angry. Around the world human beings are using water as their sewers, their garbage dumps and the recipient of their damaging mistakes and negligence. Around the world the oceans are filling with our plastic trash and fish and birds and mammals are all dying because of it. I don't know how I can make it any clearer: water is essential to life. Water is most of what you are. I don't give a fuck about your nation or your race or your religion or your ideas, if you contaminate water you contaminate the means for you and everything else to live. What is unclear about that? How much more could I spell it out??
Here in America we regularly use two gallons of fresh water to flush a half cup of urine down a sewer. We use 40 gallons or more every morning to bathe in, in pursuit of a superficial cleanliness. In my mind, there is nothing clean about it. It's filthy. To me, it is blacker than the filthiest hobo to waste our precious water for such a thing every day. Humans smell, deal with it. This is the ultimate in false gods, when we contaminate the very substance of life for the sake of appearing to be something we are not. Water is the thing of real value, not human social constructs and vanity. Water refreshes all beings and allows them to live. And yet we are treating it like garbage.
Woe is you, homo sapiens. May your status-seeking unloving unholy vain children dry up in a land with no water and be lost to the dust, for you have worshiped the most illusory phantoms. Social status. Money. Power. Envy. Pride. 'Progress'. Convenience. When you are able to drink any of these things, let me know.
May the waves drink YOU, homo sapiens, and the flood swallow you and wash you into the ocean like your own sewage, and may you finally poison yourself in such a dire manner that the remnant left over will finally learn. Water is a goddess. Water is our mother. She gives us a lot, life itself, and she is tolerant of our mischief but DO NOT FUCK WITH HER or you will be the one to get fucked.
Do you understand yet, vainglorious MONKEY? How pretty and how important, how civilized and advanced, and how proud of yourself you will be, when you are finally choking on your own filth?
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| I feel pretty |
If I sound harsh, well, perhaps to you she is just a dead substance. A couple atoms of hydrogen tacked onto an oxygen atom. To me she is a goddess, mother, giver and taker of life, and she is alive. Mother Water; along with Mother Earth among the greatest of holy things.
Even I accept that I am not as respectful as I ought to be, though I try. I take showers rather less frequently than the average American. Most of my urine is going on the compost pile now rather than in the toilet. If I do have to pee in the toilet, I don't flush until I use it again. I make do without washing clothes for much longer than most people in this country. I have started keeping a closer eye on the water I use for my vegetable garden, filling food-grade buckets with water and measuring it out from there rather than just running the hose (which can waste water remarkably quickly and in very large quantities. The buckets also allow me to have the water sit for a day or two to get out the chlorine, which the plants appreciate. These aren't difficult things but they are socially unacceptable things, for which the solution is to change people's understanding of acceptability. To waste a hundred gallons of water or more in a day when you don't actually have to, to me that is very unacceptable.
Even I accept that I am not as respectful as I ought to be, though I try. I take showers rather less frequently than the average American. Most of my urine is going on the compost pile now rather than in the toilet. If I do have to pee in the toilet, I don't flush until I use it again. I make do without washing clothes for much longer than most people in this country. I have started keeping a closer eye on the water I use for my vegetable garden, filling food-grade buckets with water and measuring it out from there rather than just running the hose (which can waste water remarkably quickly and in very large quantities. The buckets also allow me to have the water sit for a day or two to get out the chlorine, which the plants appreciate. These aren't difficult things but they are socially unacceptable things, for which the solution is to change people's understanding of acceptability. To waste a hundred gallons of water or more in a day when you don't actually have to, to me that is very unacceptable.
Mother Water, Friend of Life
Wash away the unthoughtful
May all the plants and animals I love
always have the benefit of your presence.
May your streams and lakes and rivers and oceans
everywhere run clean and whole
Thank you for your gifts
Our love always to you
Mother Water
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