DIRT
Dirt gets no respect.
My boyfriend
More than 1 in 12 deaths are caused by the dirt we breathe. Man made particles are clogging up the air and getting into our lungs and our bloodstreams. Indeed, they are messing up our health and threatening our environment.
But what can we do? We have to breathe and manufacturers need to make filthy engines to run our lives. Sometimes we need to compromise our values in the name of progress. I believe a filthy life is worth the risk.
We need to experience a certain amount of dirt so we can recognize clean. My gran ate a mud pie every morning until she was 10 years old. “Sometimes I added a bit of tree bark for flavor and once in a while a cricket to give it crunch,” she said. ”My mother never knew because I snuck one in right after my morning dump, but she did ask uncomfortable questions when my teeth got a funny tinge. We didn’t have whiteners in my day.”
My gran lived to 110 and on her death-bed she begged for a bit of dirt with her last breath. We fed her two dust bunnies and a clump of sod from her African violet and she left us with a smile on her face.
Pregnant women in Wales craved coal to eat with the same intensity that New York mothers-to-be ached for a dill pickle. Babies born in Wales showed no ill effects from their mothers’ blackened diets. Indeed, Welsh choirs often attribute the purity of their tone to the anthracite in their systems.
I believe we are depriving ourselves of the very essence of life with our determination to purify everything we touch, breathe or feel. An apple with the film of air, dust and insects nesting on their skins has twice the flavor of one tossed and whirled in a sanitizing bath of disinfectant and wiped with a sterile cloth. A hand roughened by the soil of the day has far more warmth than one damp and sticky with hand cleaner that reeks of disinfectant.
Even natural human reproduction from conception to birth is riddled with mess, drippings and germs. I, for one, prefer the old fashioned way to sanitary lab controlled in vitro procedures. If the cost of passion is a bit of risk and a possible germ, I am up for it.
Down and dirty is the way to go if you are to experience the lust and excitement of a rich full life. If you are afraid of foreign objects compromising your health, you are doomed to a life filled with fear and your every moment will be preoccupied with prevention. A clean germ free life is bland, boring and repetitive. To me, soap and disinfectants are for cowards. I’ll take my chances on the feel of an unwashed handshake or the warmth of an unsanitary cuddle. They are so worth the risk.
