World Water Day!

Today is world water day. People are often discussing world shortages of water today, the issues of pollution and desertification. The environmental issues are extremely important to everyone. However, people often forget what water really means to us. In north american especially water and its daily use becomes mundane or part of a diet ritual. "Yea yea its essential to life" but with the stuff pouring our to the tap everyday it loses that special identity that this liquid used to posses. Beyond being  physically essential It is part of our most holy rituals, from Hinduism to Christianity, tied to our rituals, integrated into our cultural identity. Gender notion are tied culturally to water, the role of a woman is often to collect water, to bathe children to wash and clean and to be defined by the fluid strength of water itself. Water is an essential tool. It is powerful enough to help us but to this day is a force that can strike fear into all of us. Water in our society and in fact in all societies, is depicted as mystical and mysterious. Its power to allow us to live and die by it captivates us. Rarely can one thing be romantic, deadly and life giving simultaneously, but then you see a storm form over and ocean, heck even over a lake, and you know water is. 

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