even though

I am grateful for smart people who can estimate how many gallons of oil are spilling out into the ocean, even though none of them are in agreement.

I am grateful for hardworking fisherman who haul in shrimp, oysters and crabs to be shipped to restaurants in the desert where people can eat them and imagine waves of water, even though I am one of those people who rarely order fish off a menu or cook it at home.

I am grateful for the camera crew who bring pictures of this drama into my living room 24/7, even though sometimes I turn it off because it's just too much information for me to handle.

I am grateful for reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation at 10 p.m. so that I can reboard the Enterprise and be amongst a rational crew that also loves to play in the holodeck, listen to classical music and order warm milk and nutmeg before catching some sleep between Klingon crises, even though I know that it's only a story and sometime in the early morning my slowly restoring ankle nerves will twinge in "wake up" mode.

There are many opportunities for my gratitude and yet I can't get there wholeheartedly; there is a seesaw in my psyche that keeps me from soaring to high in the air, that keeps pulling me back to earth, so that I am squatting on the soil, fingering the particles of the dust that remind me: this is what you will become some day, even though you are made of glimmer from the stars.