The tapestry of history that’s the foundational garment of your current life is very, very spooky. And while you may not believe in ghosts, you do have to admit that to feel haunted is to be emotionally moved by complicated details of our interconnected and incomprehensibly complicated world.
For example: your tap water.
It’s waaaay haunted (and sometimes, that’s oddly wonderful).
Water is a part of everyone and everything alive, leaves to become integral to other entities, and then you put that stuff—that immortal fluid that’s traveled the entire world for millions of years and through millions of miles of intestines, directly into your body. And if you don’t: YOU DIE.
Your water is haunted by the ghosts of other people. All the other people. Just look at what’s in the stuff:
TEARS + SNOT
It contains molecules of tears shed by all sides of all battles. You make smoothies with those tears—tears of the innocent but convicted, the lovelorn, and the mourners of all matter of death. Every shower you take is swirling river of emotions. Every cup of soup contains a tragedy—if you think about it.
HEMOGLOBIN + PLASMA
Your tap water contains molecules of the blood of everyone who ever lived. You are washing your clothes and brushing your teeth in the blood of the dead. Yes: LAUNDRY AND TOOTH BRUSHING IS METAL AS HELL.
DIVERSITY + HISTORY
Think about it: your tap water once comprised the blood of every person of every race, from every country, from times before we thought up the ideas of races and countries until now. You’re 70% water, so you’re 70% made of other people. Hope that freaks out some racists.
GLITTER + LOVE
By the way: some of those other people? Oh, they were GAY IN ALL THE WAYS. Drink the rainbow. Sweat it out.
PEE + MORE PEE
Your tap water also contains molecules of all the human pee ever peed. As the saying goes, nobody really buys a drink, they just rent it. Enjoy that thought, perverts.
TRASH + DANGER
Moving on from the biological recycling aspect of water, it contains trace amounts of poison, pollution, radiation, and experimentation. Human nature haunts itself by permanently mutilating its purest form of hope.
THAT ONE FAITH + ALL THE OTHER FAITHS
Your tap water is also the holy water used to baptize millions of people. Sorry heathens, you’re full of eons of blessings. And sorry, religious people who don’t care about other people’s faith: you’ve got those wrong-god blessings in every cell of your body, too.
ANARCHY + FREEDOM
Your water—even the water sloshing around in your body—is something nobody ever, truly owns. Evaporation from across the world leads to condensation that floats to everywhere and then falls as precipitation that transfers wetness across borders without paying tariffs. Water embodies the ideals the philosophers tried to teach us to be. Water doesn’t care about your silly economies.
FUTURE CHILDREN + THEIR FOOD
Water is the ghost of the future. What you gulp down today will be sucked into the forests and clouds of tomorrow. What you poison will return the favor to your grandchildren. Every loop of the water cycle is a page of human history.
EXAMPLES FOR STRONG CHILDREN + POWERFUL ADULTS
Water is the ghost of what we can be. It is unruly, ungovernable, unpredictable, perpetually necessary, simultaneously domesticated and foreign, forever shared, and freaking haunted.
Every sip you take is a chance for you to be the same.