Gratitude is a flower.

However… I have long been unable to understand practices of gratitude, as I’d only ever interpreted practice as a form of penance. If someone told me to practice gratitude, I would only hear in the idea of a gratitude practice, someone whispering under their breath:

You ungrateful bitch.

Forgive me if I don’t have a gratitude practice. In fact, forgive us all. Grace is at the center of the work of gratitude. It is not that we should be thankful we get anything at all (“you should be grateful!”), but that we are afforded the luxuries of life above breath because we have allowed ourselves to accept it.

I learned of a bot that can attend zoom meetings in one’s place, take notes and record meetings. I don’t want to accidentally advertise this but sometimes I wish I had a Tony Oursler style animatronic effigy to mutter what people want my face to say. Maybe I *am* an ungrateful bitch.

But gratitude is a flower. It is beautiful because that is how it survives. It is remarkable because it will die otherwise. It exists for the purity of existence. I do not need a reason to send you flowers. They find you because they have to. I give you beauty because it is what keeps me alive, too.