The Gratefulness Project

Day 1. Homo Mobilis: I'm thankful for mobility, for my faithful little Hyundai, and for this bi-pedaled body that propels me today across living rooms, city blocks, and campuses.

Day 2. Spiration: re & in: For the breath that fills my lungs as I lay in bed, the tiny mouths inside those lungs that take the breath into my bloodstream, and for the breath-blood that wakes my body and mind.

Day 3. Will & Work: For the 111 students I have this fall, for the chance to drive with books to class each day and teach the things I've learned to think and love.

Day 4. Me lady: For the lady who has walked with me over strange terrain this last year and a half. Thanks, Shells.

Day 5. Color: For the pale lavender cloud bank on the horizon this morning, against a sea-foam green sky. And later, for the hummingbird flashing in the rain-damp shadows like a splotch of emerald paint over orange crocosmia blooms.

Day 6. Human energy: For the heat we give to one another in touch, for the heart-lifting light that beams from kind eyes and smiles.

Day 7. IPA: For the heavily-hopped ale first brewed by 19th century Brits, and now a Portland mainstay. Trivial? No, a daily friend.

Day 8. Fellow Citizens: For the abstraction and the people themselves, the diverse mass of fellow Americans who hiked with me down Naito Parkway, chanting for a healthier body politic. Not for the protest or even the message, but for the people gathered, the headless Leviathan, all arms and wings.

Day 9. Sleep: For the happy shadow that passes nightly over consciousness, providing momentary shade.

Day 10. Family: For the group of creatures who share my genes, my blood, who gather vociferously over pasta and wine, those few I loved intuitively as a child and now, after my thirty one years here, as their friend and fellow creature.

Day 11. Variety: For the four kinds of apples I bought out of the fall harvest-barrels at the grocery store-- the dry Jonagold, the smallish Ribstom Pippen, the exotic Swedish Gourmet, and the holy-heck-perfect Liberty-- and for their unique flavors, the variation from sweet to sour, the way they symbolize a refusal to streamline for the sake of capitalistic ease. Tasty divots in the landscape of an increasingly featureless world.