It started with someone offering me a water bottle at an outdoor event. I had my own reusable with me but it was hot and I was hot and it was empty. I said, “No thanks.” The Donor said, “What are you a blooming idiot? Don’t tell me you’ve become a fundamentalist?”
It continued in hotels, where my husband and I would battle about the Keurig. I brought Mason Jars to get the hotel coffee and dishes to use and reuse for the free breakfast. He hid his head.
I’d been discovered. I no longer take a daily shower. I obsess about water and plastics and the world after the human. The latter is the most fun I have all day. It could be better without the 6% of us who overuse everything, which 6% includes me.
My friend in the 94%, Surdna, in the North of India, has a daily relationship with water too. She walks ten miles each morning, with two empty one gallon buckets that look a lot like an old Clorox gallon bottle. Round, firm, with that gritty grey sheen plastic gets when used a lot. She fills them up at a spigot, after standing in line a few hours and rests before returning. She chats up her colleagues, giving new meaning to water cooler conversations.
After twenty miles, she has done her day’s work, fetching water for bathing her three children and cooking and cleaning the food and dishes. She doesn’t check her steps on her phone.
I can’t look at a faucet or a toilet or a shower without thinking of her. I use all the water I can find and walk around my house ceremoniously watering the plants or filling up the outdoor cistern. I call these walks pilgrimages. Pasta water. Half full water glasses. These are drops that drop in a bucket, far away, as thoughts and prayers, not action. I have no pretensions about them. They are purely aesthetic, not useful. I also pick up stray water bottles on the street and add their orphaned water to my various “buckets.”
Surdna has her ways; I have mine. We both give precious time to precious water. For her it is a worthy fundamental; for me it is an unworthy fundamentalism. I am so first world I can turn privilege into a problem.
Yes: I am guilty about my guilt. I know there is no impact in my confessional booth. It is likely an icing of privilege on pre-existing privilege.
Mami Wata, a female water deity with deep roots in African and Caribbean lore, is part of an outdoor exhibit in New Orleans. Mami Wata knows both me and my quarrel with a daily shower and Surdna and her buckets. How do I get my excess to Surdna? Certainly not by the well-worn highway of guilt.
Still, punishmentalism has won out; grace is still flowing somewhere but not for me or Surdna around water. We both work hard for it and against it.
The exhibit in New Orleans called Prospect.5 argues: “Nothing happens here without consideration, deference and, ultimately, submission to what the water may bring.”
“Sentinel”, also in the exhibit, is a twelve-foot bronze inspired by the anthropomorphic qualities of Zulu ceremonial spoons, in which an elongated representation of the human body serves as a handle, while the circular head functions as the ladle. It is the body as a literary vessel, designed to carry water, like Surdna’s bucket does. My fundamentalism makes me a pitcher. But even all my water doesn’t wash away the sin. The damage is too thorough already. The flood already flooded.
Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City and 11th richest man in the world, has dedicated himself to abolishing plastic bottles. If only I had his power, I’d do the same myself. But that’s the point: no matter how much of a fundamentalist I become about water, I will only make a dent. He will make a difference.
My guilt is as useless as my impotence but so what?
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My shower is in textured relationship to white gallon buckets in the North of India and to bronzes in New Orleans. It is a pitcher with a hole in it.
The creators of Prospect.5 conclude, “One artist and one triennial can’t make up for decades of disinvestment and disenfranchisement…. But they can create moments of meaningful engagement….This private gesture will do nothing to change life in the city. …. Instead, it will achieve…… thoughtful corners. It was about getting to know New Orleans and over time forming a bond.”
So is my fundamentalism, a private corner pouring out into the street, spilling over while waiting 20 miles a day for the Goddesses to save Surdna and maybe even me.
Donna Schaper teaches leadership at Hartford Seminary, writes as the Dolly Mama, is a chaplain for Silver Linings and works with Bricks and Mortals.