The Bucket in my Shower That I Use to Flush the Toilet
05-05-02022
Within our home at the heart of America’s hottest city, my partner (Destiny) & I keep a bucket in our shower. It is there to catch the water as we bathe. We’ve been pouring this water at the base of the palms, eucalyptus, cacti, & stubby shrubs that surround our home. It has been a lovely little ritual for me, to wake, shower, & walk out in the rising sun with my bucket, selecting that morning’s lucky flora.
But it is m͎͎̾o͎͎̾n͎͎̾s͎͎̾o͎͎̾o͎͎̾n͎͎̾ ͎͎̾s͎͎̾e͎͎̾a͎͎̾s͎͎̾o͎͎̾n͎͎̾. The rain is plentiful, and the flora don't want for water. This prompted Destiny to propose another use for our shower bucket: flushing the toilet.
I’m quick to embrace this idea—too quick perhaps—and was happy to see that it flushes the toilet just fine. It’s also quicker, saving me a walk to the yard. My toilet is—as is typical—mere feet from my shower. At some point the western world decided to bathe next to their toilets. I suppose it makes sense for efficient pipe laying, or some other materialist answer of pragmatics. But I believe there is 𝐒𝐇𝐀𝐃𝐎𝐖▄𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐊 happening here; an architectural norm linked to our subconscious 𝒟𝐸𝒮𝐼𝑅𝐸 to confront, daily, the muddled antagonism of ⅄⊥ᴚIᗡ & 𝘊𝘓𝘌𝘈𝘕.
Have you ever used a guest bathroom that is a toilet & sink alone? What a treat, such a safe container for the vulnerable obligation of letting waste flow forth. That daily confrontation with our estranged ᗩᑎIᗰᗩᒪ nature. That nature troubles the illusion of ourselves as civilized identities standing straight-spined in a civilized world. The ᗩᑎIᗰᗩᒪ commands that we momentarily drop these sweet little lies, expose our organs of elimination, and let liquids & solids of offensive odor & color pour out of fleshy valves that expand & contract in such a moist, meaty way.
A multi-stalled public restroom is among the most unpleasant places for this type of surrender. We are too exposed. I think of times I have heard the cacophony of bowels belonging to a mysterious stall neighbor. The predictable parts of me are revolted of course, but secret part in me is astonished by the bravery & vulnerability of this human who is yielding to the discordant symphony of their ᗩᑎIᗰᗩᒪ nature so publicly.
And simultaneously this is quite sociopathic behavior. It rejects almost all the agreements of polite society in one blast. If all of civilization were to start defecating in public with such bravado, would all of modernity be flushed away? Would we flow beyond good and evil? Would we find ourselves in an Earth-based collective or, possibly, strolling back to the evolutionary realms of the great apes. It is so much . . . to poop.
So why was I unphased by this new taboo use for the shower bucket? Well—beyond the rationale of water-use-reduction America’s hottest city—I have an urge to keep an elemental connection to the Earth.
It’s a point often made. The toilet, which █▓ 𝓭𝓲𝓼𝓪𝓹𝓹𝓮𝓪𝓻𝓼 ▒░ that offensive byproduct of our ᗩᑎIᗰᗩᒪ nature, becomes a metaphor for our effort to hide from the ᗩᑎIᗰᗩᒪS of our being. ᗩᑎIᗰᗩᒪS that remain reliant on the Earth.
This daily confrontation is whisked away; our tax dollars at their most uncontroversial work. I’ve never heard a politician discuss the merits of less spending on sewage management. They’d be impeached before the end of the day, possibly hung. ≋SHIT≋ is profoundly bipartisan. ≋SHIT≋ removal, with its power to unify all of the nation, underscores a collective surrender to a machine that seeks—with to much zealous, I believe—to █▓ 𝓭𝓲𝓼𝓪𝓹𝓹𝓮𝓪𝓻 ▒░ human connection to the natural world.
I am not so inclined to totally disappear this connection, or if I am, I’m also inclined to grapple with that compulsion. Right now, that looks like acknowledging my ≋SHIT≋ with a bucket of my bathing water—itself the waste of the daily care of my ᗩᑎIᗰᗩᒪ body—until physics beyond my grasp suck it away with the toilet's goodbye refrain of . . .
ₛₕₐ ₛₕᵤcₖ … ₛₕᵤcₖₛₕᵤcₖₛₕᵤcₖₛₕᵤcₖ.
Am I sending out some signals of virtue here? Well, maybe I am. I’m going out of my way to reflect on water & its flow. To acknowledge my connection to that flow. I could, perhaps, save more water with the e-commerce purchase of a low flow toilet from the manufacturer offering free-shipping. I could donate to a water conservation non-profit. I could use cash to satisfy my 𝒟𝐸𝒮𝐼𝑅𝐸 for quick solutions . . . and I often do.
But the bucket is a physical daily act. It flows as an offering of presence & awareness; an offering that is more real to me than an exchange of cash. I don’t want 𝓢𝓶𝓾𝓬𝓴𝓮𝓻’𝓼™ jam connections. I want to walk into the woods & pluck berries right from the bush.
There is a torrent of critiques to contrast this practice against the incalculable water waste of the corporations. But this drop in the bucket is about me, not them. It is in the pantheon of tiny actions that help me stay swept up in ＬටＶＥ with the Earth. Even the bucket itself—shipped full of cashew butter to a company I worked for in 2015—is a ＬටＶＥ connection. What a long, strange trip this bucket & I have shared. It has transcended the Samsara of one-use disposal and entered the pureland of my sentimentality; I’ve found a ＬටＶＥ for a bucket.
This is my connection, and there are plenty more to create, but I don’t think many of them can be purchased.
I don’t think . . .