Thank you to everyone who continues to read my blog posts — old and new!
Today is a rainy and windy day in the greater Boston area.
Now that it’s December, part of me wishes that it were snow falling insead of rain.
The sentimental part of me, that is.
The practical part of me — who would be helping to shovel it from our sidewalk, porches, and driveway — is OK with rain.
I was very grateful to read recently that Massachusetts has mostly recovered from last summer’s drought due to the rain which has fallen in recent months.
Hurrah!
But as most of us know, the rest of the world is not as fortunate — with water levels falling to unprecedented levels in the western and southwestern parts of the USA, for example.
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
I wrote a blog post in January 2020 which featured an older version of today’s song.
You can click here to check it out if you are curious. I went wild with lots of water imagery from Pixabay…
However, in keeping with my current resolve to share shorter blog posts, I will include fewer photos today.
Another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
I’ve been getting acupuncture on a regular basis for 30+ years.
My practitioners have been part of the five-element school of acupuncture, which is an extremely wise and beautiful branch of acupuncture.
Each patient, for example, is viewed as a garden to be tended to by the practitioner in order that all five elements/phases of our body/mind/spirit — water, wood, fire, earth, and metal —remain harmonious and in balance.
The water element corresponds — among many other things — with the season of winter, with the feeling of fear (and/or the lack of fear), with the taste of salt, with the sound of groaning, with slowing down/resting/sleeping, with meditating, and with the experience of not-knowing.
You can click here for a link to an acupuncturist’s webpage which describes more about the water element if you are curious.
Most of us are a blend of all five elements/phases.
I, for example, was diagnosed by J. R. Worsley as a Wood type — with Earth and Water within (ie: Mud as I like jokingly to say).
He recommended, among other things, that I do more swimming — and in the years since my diagnostic visit with him I have spent many hours in pools, lakes, ponds and oceans.
Recently, however, I have become less excited about swimming in the crowded chlorinated pool — which also hosts swimming classes for children of all ages — nearest my home.
So nowadays I swim in lakes and ponds (and occasionally the ocean) during the warmer months of the year — although a friend and I did have share a brisk, final swim in Walden Pond this past October.
It is very easy for many of us to take fundamental blessings such as daily access to clean water for granted.
I continue to be a fan of counting one’s blessings as an antidote to the onslaught of news and commercial messages with which most of us are bombarded every day via social media, television, radio, ads on the sides of busses, etc.
One more deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
May we all be mindful of ways that we can conserve and honor and re-use the water flowing through our faucets, our showers, our baths, our washing machines, our dishwashers, our veins, our arteries, our lymphatic vessels, our skin, our tear ducts, our plants, our forests, our systems of agriculture, etc.
I will end with a few more delightful images from Pixabay of different forms of water.
Thank you to all of the photographers who share their work there.
Thank you to Doug Hammer for contributing his artistry to my song as a pianist and as an engineer.
You are always welcome to visit my website — where you can find many songs and learn more about my musical life here on planet earth if you are curious.
You can also find me singing on Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, YouTube and other digital music platforms.
Any song you “like” or “heart” or add to one of your playlists will improve the algorithmic activity of my music there!
I hope to release my “Ode to Water” to the non-WordPress musical world sometime in 2023…
Thank you again for reading and listening to one of my blog posts.
Very gratefully yours,
will
amusicalifeonplanetearth 
We do take water for granted.
Yes! It if very easy for me to get swept up in the drama of the moment and forget how fortunate I am to have foundational blessings/gifts such as clean water, a roof over my head, food, access to healthcare, etc. etc. etc.
Yes, worry about water is something to add to our concerns. I like the way your song covers everything–and even mentions drowning to include sea level rise and 100 year floods year after year…I also like the way the piano sort of ripples…
Yes, Doug is a masterful pianist. He has an ever-increasingly successful career as a solo composer/pianist/performer! And on the topic of drowning, I remember, before I became a decent swimmer, how terrifying it was to feel as if I was about to drown (and I also had a beloved younger cousin actually drown in a lake…) It will be an extraordinary shock to most of us when more and more parts of the Arctic and Antarctic ice shelves break off and float/melt in the ocean! Deep breath in. Deep breath out.
We need it in So Cal desperately. Love your musical composition. Happy Holidays!
Thank you, Cindy! It looks like many (or all?) of us are going to experience a profound reckoning regarding water patterns/flow/consumption/pollution/etc. here on planet earth in the coming years… Deep breath in. Deep breath out. This grim likelihood underscores my gratitude for all of the clean water in my life right now…
Hello Will, I feel grateful that we can turn on a tap and have access to fresh water and that comes from my young years in Africa. Your voice is crystal clear and Doug’s piano notes tinkle with your eloquent lyrics. Beautiful. Thank you. ❤
You are most welcome, Jane! Maybe I can manage to write one (relatively short) blog post per month in 2023… A gentle and lovely holyday season to you!
Lovely song and reminders about the preciousness of water. Like you, I love to swim in natural water, but have no nearby access. I’m overdue for some water play time. Thanks for caring Will.
You are very welcome, Brad! Thank YOU for reading and listening and commenting yet again.
My pleasure Will.
I really love you are a musician. This song caught my attention. Thanks so much Anita
You are very welcome, Anita. I love traveling around the world via your photographs.
You certainly named a lot of things that contain or consist of water in that great song, Will!
Even here on Canada’s “wet coast,” we had three months without rain last summer and well into October. Even now, some lakes on Vancouver Island are at record low levels because now we have had weeks of below normal temperatures, and much of the precipitation at higher elevations has been snow. So we’re thinking about water a lot!
Yes, indeed! If nothing else, all of the challenges we are now facing — and will probably continue to face under more and more duress as greenhouse gas levels continue to rise — may re-educate us to how amazingly interconnected everything is here on planet earth. Most of us haven’t been well-educated about even the most basic connections — such as how plants breathe out what we breath in and vice versa. Healthy forests and oceans (full of photosynthesizers large and small) are not optional. They are fundamentally essential for the health of all animal life — including us humans with our opposable thumbs who somehow have come to view ourselves as separate from — with unchallenged dominion over — mother earth. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. As I said in a comment on one of your blog posts, however, I am reassured and inspired to read the other comments from people in the WordPress community who ARE aware of what is unfolding these days on planet earth and are making changes and taking actions in their daily lives to help tip us back into balance. Onward!
Everything is connected. Thanks for your optimistic outlook, Will!
Thank you, Will, for your reflective and sensitive insights. And, as always, your music.
You are very, very welcome!!! Thank YOU for listening and reading and commenting!!!
We definitely take water for granted. Here in Canada, it makes me sad and angry that many of our northern Indigenous communities don’t have access to a safe water supply. A stark reminder of the devastation white settlers had on their simple and sustainable way of life.
I continue to hope that indigenous wisdom and practices — such as the concept of slowing down and carefully exploring what the consequences of a particular action might be for many generations to come — will increasingly enter our mainstream consciousness…
Hi Will, your posts always make me think and also feel good. Thank you! Yes, water. Let’s be grateful for our clean water and do what we can to help our precious planet Earth. Best to you!
Thank you, as always, for finding time to listen and read… and leave a comment!
My pleasure, Will. 🙂
A thought-provoking post. … Walden is walkable from my house. Perhaps we’ll run into each other near there sometime.
What a delight to be able to walk to Walden. I hate that I have to drive to get there (albeit with a friend at the wheel of her Prius, which gets better-than-average gas mileage). It is such a refuge — and seems to have been discovered by all kinds of people from many different cultural backgrounds!! We have heard all sorts of languages being spoken (and music being played) during our swimming visits there.
Yes. Free parks are so important for quality of life. The hard part with Walden is getting there and then paying for parking.
My friend Carole has an annual pass which is quite inexpensive (and may apply to all MA or even national parks???) I will ask her for details but I think it is a wonderful perq based on one’s age…
Yes, I think that’s what I have.
Love your beautiful song about water! It is very well done. Your Ode to Water is very relevant in our time. It used to be something we all took for granted! Now we are beginning to realize how important it is to all of us!
Yes! And coincidentally I am at a lovely cottage in upstate NY today where there is no running water due to the polar blast that much of the USA recently experienced. Plumber is coming this afternoon to figure what part of the system froze (and whether any pipes have burst). We arrived yesterday (after no one had been here for a few days) to discover this situation. Luckily we have a couple of gallons of water to drink and rinse our hands. It is quite sobering, however, to be reminded of how many times a day I reach for a faucet to wash dishes, fill a kettle, wash clothes, take a shower, use the toilet, wash my hands, etc. (since this cottage’s water is not flowing…)
You really got a hit again this year! Hope you can get everything up and running again soon. There is so much in our lives that we take for granted! The future could provide us with a rude awakening!
Agreed. I hope a lot of folks decide to add solar panels to their homes in response to the amazingly selfish people who are shooting at our energy infrastructure…
Hi Will. Greatly enjoyed your Water Song. I often leave your blog posts more thoughtful than when I arrived, and this one is no exception. We do indeed take so much for granted, not least our precious freedoms. As I look out over a rain-lashed part of Yorkshire, I can’t help wondering – not for the first time – why no one does the obvious and exports some of the stuff. The answer, I guess, is money. That aside – a very Happy New Year to you!
Your comments always make my day! I am so grateful for our humble, respectful WordPress community. A very happy New Year to you, too! We shall see what challenges and rewards 2023 bestows upon us…