I am thankful for a thousand forgotten Thursdays. I am
thankful for unobserved dew covered spider webs on spring mornings near
dilapidated barns. I am thankful for routing tables, IP addresses, the
unrecorded thoughts of Shakespearean characters, the question of existence vs.
non-existence, and medieval drawings of imaginary creatures. I am thankful for
unheard trees falling in remote forests. I am thankful for languages I won't know,
religions I won't follow, and various kinds of welding. I am thankful for
engineering and medicine. I am thankful for the violins in the song
"Kashmir." I am thankful for the sighs of aging strangers on distant
continents. Empty sunlit afternoon sidewalks. I am thankful for untaken
photographs and the airy space in the lower boughs of well formed trees. The
unspoken names of all the sparrows in the world. I am thankful that somewhere,
someone is being born who I will never know, who will live out a complex,
unique life and never know that you or I or anyone reading this ever existed. I
am thankful for the smell of library books. I am thankful for weekday waves on
deserted Caribbean beaches. I am thankful for questions about free will and determinism.
I am thankful for the Latin terms for rare medical conditions. I am thankful
for slide rules, multiplication tables, old tide charts, almanacs, and
forgotten hand-silhouette turkeys in Big Chief tablets. I am thankful for the
pretentious hackwork of listing unrelated things, and the calculated cowardice
of false humility. I am thankful for half remembered phrases of classical
music. I am thankful for the souls of forgotten spreadsheets and the sad
memories of empty filing cabinets. I am thankful for dust motes in sunbeams in
for-lease office spaces. I am thankful for the forgotten chance genius of
drunks and stoners. I am thankful for solitary nuns in desolate suburban
afternoon churches. I am thankful for thirty-year-old copies of TV Guide in
abandoned Arizona desert doublewide trailers. I am thankful for the olfactory
scheme of dogs, the Dewey Decimal System, and scientific discoveries that will
happen a thousand years from today. I am thankful for comedy sketches yet
unwritten. I am thankful for unwanted glass knick-knacks in Goodwill and
Salvation Army stores. I am thankful for new music I will never appreciate. I
am thankful for changing fashion and geologic time. I am thankful for esoteric
terms used by pompous wine tasters. I am thankful for Euclidean geometry and
the Earth's rotation. I am thankful for tinnitus and the DNA damage theory of
aging. I am thankful for the New York Stock Exchange, solar flares, and
whatever is beyond observable space. I am thankful for the failures and achievements
our 34th President. I am thankful for quiet moments of contemplation
happening everywhere. I am thankful for "everything subtle, complex,
abstract and profound." I am thankful for the countless things and
unthings for which I am unaware that I should be thankful.
-----------------------
Full disclosure: the phrase "everything subtle,
complex, abstract and profound" is lifted directly from the Epilogue of a
book:
Dobelli, Rolf. The Art of Thinking Clearly. New York,
Harper Collins, 2013. Print
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