Ten Things to be (genuinely) Thankful For
- My name, my lineage and the gifts whispered by my ancestors into my eager ear.
- The dozens of times that the language now called English in English met up in combat or cooperation with other languages, learning new words and duplicating vocabulary to afford more subtlety of meaning, more nuance in rhythm and sound.
- My fortunate historical timing: a span of existence that has contained both drive-in theaters and chat rooms, both Rocky Horror and Modern Family, Tricia Nixon and Todd Palin, the artificial wealth of an American abroad and the artificial poverty of the American at home.
- The magical marriage between thought and feeling.
- The way a truly funny person can pull me out of my mind and body, the laughter with its helium levitating the soul up (into thin air).
- Oceans, mountains, waterfalls.
- Sex when it is passionate, when it is playful; sex when the encounter quiets the brain while the voice of sensation is a shivering scream; and both bodies are active, eyes locked in eyes, the full potential of our fingers finding marvelous lands, the sailor from south Wales standing on a tropical beach or in the jungle for the very first time.
- The miracle of my eyes, the magic of evolution in which a few phototropic cells beguiled by the light of stars and moons and galaxies advanced in complexity to be capable in decoding whole mysteries of color, light and shadow, of present experience and future projection, the imaginings of memory moving slowly, flickering, across the surface of the moon.
- Music, all kinds in all situations.
- and The Sky, of course.
