This note-able topic is the outgrowth of some ‘shower thoughts’, yesterday. But it is also very much related to our present political situation. 

I had been toying with the notion of a diary-of-sorts, something of our time under Trump 2.0. The idea of a diary came from my reading of Victor Klemperer, specifically the introduction to his Language of the Third Reich. And that, working back, came from reading Timothy Snyder’s little book, On Tyranny. 

But, the problem I keep running into with diaries is that, lacking a focal point on which to turn my thoughts and attention, I am dreadful about keeping them going. I seem to have no trouble starting; I just ‘lose interest’ … though that is not entirely accurate. Focus is a function not only of ‘interest’ but of time. And, well, time … how easily is that disrupted, breaking focus and damping interest?

And that is where, more or less while indulging in ‘shower thoughts’, I stumbled on the notion of things taken for granted. How hard would it be to keep a diary going thinking about and then meditating on things one routinely takes for granted? And we take a lot for granted … if nothing else this could also be an exercise in self- and other-awareness.

Example: “I take for granted …” the ‘fact’ that when I open a tap in/on the house, water will flow. Not just water but, rather, water that is clean, safe – in a word: potable. That water is assumed to always be ‘there’ ready to flow from the faucet so that I can then drink it, clean our dishes and clothes, clean my body, prepare our food, water our garden. I also know –albeit in a ‘first world’ sort of way – how discomfiting it can be to turn the knob or lift the ‘handle’ and unexpectedly have nothing come from the faucet … nothing, except maybe the sound of air moving in the piping.

From where does this taking ‘water’ for granted come? And, what can I do to disrupt the complacency behind such thought-less thinking? What can I do to make present the precarity of uninterrupted access to water?

The nature of things taken for granted seems to me to be their (sorry, Heidegger …) readiness-to-hand or Zuhandenheit, their ubiquity, their duration/durability, the ‘fact’ that we have never – or rarely ever – been without. 

Reading Frank Herbert’s DUNE was an early wake-up call; subsequent readings have helped reinforce awareness. Living in the desert southwest – both as a child in the mountains around Los Alamos and now at the northern edge of the great Chihuahuan Desert – also helps with awareness. Metered water supplies, monthly water and sewage bills based on realtime use, the ability to log on to the City website and ‘see’ one’s water use in real time all contribute to water awareness. 

So, each day – not necessarily at a specific time but, rather, as the time finds me or I find it – I will endeavor to identify and question (interrogate?) something I take for granted.