Water
Water
The question that haunts me: what will the price of water be when I can no longer afford it?
So much about earth and our environments, seem corny to depict. Air brushed landscapes, facsimiles of trees, dead flowers pourris the pot, dolphins and seashells adorn vacation decor. Embellishments turn off men as prospective renters so everyone is told to strip their sentimentality down to edgy design artifacts. Anything natural is musty. The art world’s favorite documentation of nature is high contrast Ansel Adams. I dunno maybe I’m being unfair.
But water. No one questions water. Water is never too sentimental or arch or corny. Water is never unable to sell an experience.
The question that haunts me: what will the price of water be when I can no longer afford it?
Why can’t we control natural plenitude? Famines only happen during industrial periods of surplus, I am told. That is a historical statistic. We are very bad at managing wealth. What is the world inside water that we can’t live without it nor inundated within in. The natural sounds of wind contradicts the strength of water, but a heartbeat is a drum, full of blood.
Now that I know what triggers my desire for cigarettes—the uncanny desire to become wet—and now that I can control my actually smoking them (I am on Day 4 of quitting again, after cheating in 1-5 cigarettes a day for the past two months), I wonder if I can control how much I need the water meant to keep me alive. Is that the same water I would have to pay so dearly for?
The price of water is very different than “the price of salt.” When water becomes priceless, will I have had enough of it to agree that forsaking its purity would be worth saving water for others? Would I have the largeness of spirit to save potable water for others? Would I be clever enough to determine another means of procuring it? Could I live off poison if I convinced the world it made me less sentimental but so incredibly wet?
What would I do to recover lost memories? There’s one that involves drowning I can’t piece together. It’s quite literally been washed away. I’d always thought it a blessing that I could not recall certain parts of my past. My sister says she has no memories of her childhood except seeing me get hit across the face when I was caught coming home late one night after joyriding to nowhere in particular. I’d started my dad’s car and started driving around our suburb in the dark because it felt so nice to control the car at night. That’s not a story about getting slapped. It’s about how it was fucking worth it.
I exempt myself from the responsibility of avoiding car traffic because it brings me too much joy. Driving a car is a message from God to me. My driving is God telling the world that not all water is a sacrifice.