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	uge! Gigantic metal pipes hundreds of feet in the air with black joining marks where they stuck the corners onto the straight parts and metal beams all over the place supporting stuff and all of the pipes twined all together like a big huge knot. There are also lots of huge tanks up in the air on stilts for holding the extra water. Oh, and tons of knobs on the pipes for turning stuff on and off. Some of the knobs are this wide.” She held both arms out to the side. Dishwater dripped on the floor.       “Nobody else has a well?”       “The underground water is so deep, that nobody else can drill far enough down to reach it. Plus, it’s all bedrock that they have to drill through. The only water is the water that comes from the waterworks and every drop of that is regulated, measured, and monitored. The guy even checks people’s houses to make sure they’re not storing any water. You get to have water for washing, but you have to return it after you’re through. He measures what comes back and if any is missing, it gets taken out of your drinking water allotment. And he uses the returned wash water for toilets and stuff like that. Then the toilet water goes into a big sewage plant. After it has been processed it goes out onto the farms.”       “He’s really got everybody under his thumb, doesn’t he? Good thing he’s such a nice guy.”       “The people like having a steady supply of water, but they don’t like all of the rules. Nobody can do anything that they want to do. They can only do what the waterworks guy tells them they can do. So, everybody is constantly trying to figure out ways to get around the rules. The owner, the boss, can’t understand why people are so uncooperative and unappreciative. Here he is working day and night to do what’s best for them. He doubles his efforts to make sure everything is done in the best possible way and that everybody follows his instructions. He makes more rules, hires new inspectors, appoints monitors and prints out lots of instructional books to help people understand why his way is the very best way for them to live their lives.”       “Poor guy. Now I’m starting to feel sorry for him. You know, Jeanie, the sad thing is, almost everybody will act that way if they get the chance. Homer really botched things up by trying to apply the same type of rules that work in physics and chemistry, to living things. There may be One Way for earth, wind and fire, but there is not One Way for people. Heck, there isn’t even One Way for one person from one year to the next since we grow and change all the time.”       “Great aunt Lily, do you mean there’s no way to avoid having so many bossy people?”       “Someone has to run the waterworks. I don’t think the Eunice part of people would ever bother to make a waterworks. She’s only interested in soaking up the world through her or our senses. She’s not interested in being organized or planning for the future. So I guess we’re probably always going to have bossy people, though they might be less bossy if they knew something about the Eunice part of themselves-and others. Jeanie where did you get this wonderful idea? It’s just perfect.”       “I thinking about what you told me about Homer, and it reminded me of my school. We have this really strict principal who makes rules for everything. He won’t let us eat anything except at lunchtime, and, last year, when the water fountain broke, we had to go to the nurse’s office to get a drink of water and we were only allowed to do that once a day. How much more of the story can I tell while it’s my turn?”

	“As much or as little as you want.”       “I have some more ideas, but I haven’t really got them figured out, yet. Maybe I should stop here.”       Lily set down the dish and towel that she was holding and applauded loudly. “Bravo. This is so exciting. There are so many ways to go from here…I’ll have a terrible time choosing what will happen when I get my turn. Thank you, sweetheart. You are a wonder.” She gave Jeanie a little kiss on the cheek.       Lily glanced at the wall clock. “It is now eight thirty. I know I can’t possibly keep you here at the house until we go to town, but please be sure and wear your watch so you can be back here by ten thirty. And Jeanie, promise me you won’t go to far away. Make sure you stay within shouting distance of the house. Promise?”       “I promise.”       “I believe I am going to do some painting. If it’s not going to rain, I might as well take advantage of the beautiful light. I sure hope we don’t get into a drought.” Jeanie was already out the door. Ignoring the steps, she jumped off the deck and hit the ground running.       “Jeanie!” Lily leaned out of the screen door. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” She was holding Jeanie’s camera.       “Oops.” Jeanie thumped up the stairs, shaking her head in exasperation at herself. Lily watched the girl zigzagging across the meadow, her hair sticking out at odd angles around her ears, shirt half-untucked in the back, and socks that did not match, one up and the other down.       Jeanie went only a short distance into the woods, and then sat down with her back against a dead log. When she had been out before breakfast, she had, very carefully, experimented with ‘walking backwards.’ She didn’t want to be sick like she had been yesterday, but she was too curious not to want to go there again. She had found, this time, that the motion, the ‘being pushed forward’ sensation that had made her ill, was not nearly so nauseating once she knew to expect it.       Before breakfast, she had been looking at, or ‘knowing,’ the plants that were around her. She had found that all the living plants made a tiny, shivery ripple in the fluid stuff that she knew when she walked backwards. Being in the forest, in the middle of a living place, she knew what each plant ‘knew’ or maybe it would be better to say that she knew what it was at each moment. Jeanie could not find words with the width and depth to describe what she knew from each plant. It was like a flavor or a smell; full of many connotations, some strong, some faint. And, if she put her hand on a plant, the plant’s little shivery trail joined and mingled with her own, much larger, more turbulent wake and the sensation of ‘knowing’ was so clear and strong that it was almost invasive; it became a part of her own being, or of what she was at that moment in time.       She had made a particular effort to try and know more about what it was that had made her sick. When she was ‘there’ she found that she could feel it all the time. It reminded of her of the time she had been to the beach. When she was swimming on top of a big wave, all the things in the wave might be moving around on their own, mixing and twirling, but the wave carried them all, herself and anything else within it, up, down and forward. Everything from the tiniest blade of grass to the highest tree was being steadily pushed forward, changing, shifting in color and shape at the same time that its individual wake, or bit of turbulence was swirling gently out behind it.       Jeanie thought of Lily’s question about how she could tell that it was moving or being pushed forward, and she saw that it was, as Lily had speculated, because she was simultaneously aware of the world here, of the world there. One part of her, the Eunice part of her, knew the world as moving, changing, fluid, and undivided, eternally growing. The other part of her, the Homer part, knew the world as fixed, stable, and orderly where everything had a predictable beginning and end.       Now, after breakfast, Jeanie was hoping to see a bird or maybe a squirrel while she was walking backwards. The spot where she was sitting was in a little dip next to an open area in the forest. The fallen log that she was leaning against was between her and the clearing and it made a good hiding place. Continue on next page
	Copyright © 2002 by Jay Arraich. All rights reserved. All photographs copyright © 2002 by Jay Arraich jay@arraich.com	next page Animal Rights arraich.com Links