The other day, I started to notice that the world was looking weary and grimy and seemed to be in just the sort of condition that would be helped by a long hot bath. So I ran one in my bathroom and popped her in. She soaked for a while and then I picked her up and wrung her out like a sponge. Boy, you would not believe the gunky water that ran out! It was positively black and gritty, like grease that has been in a car a little too long. That water was filthy; full of war and poverty and disease, hatred and greed.
Poor world. I decided to scrub her. The first thing to come off was her make-up. Boy, Hollywood looked a bit different, I’ll tell you. And so did all those cheerleaders, and the little girls whose mothers teach them to prance around and put them in beauty pageants. They all looked and felt so much better!
I shampooed the rain forest, to get the ashes out of her hair, then used a deep-conditioning cream rinse because hey, you’ve got to take care of that place and the plants and animals are big on moisture there. I saw that the jungles of Africa and Asia could use a shampoo too so I did that next, and trimmed up the African grasslands while I was at it.
Then I noticed a lot of pimples and black heads in Texas and the Middle East and even out on the ocean floor, some places. All the places where oil comes up out of the earth. So I took some cleanser and an exfoliator to them, and that was when I realized that greed and a sense of entitlement are the hardest kind of dirt to get rid of. Popping the zits took a while and hurt some, but rooting out the bacteria and treating it was important. Having learned this I used the exfoliator on most of Europe and North America, as well.
I decided that I should filter all the water in the seas and oceans, being careful not to hurt the animals, of course, but then I saw that she could already do that for herself; the rain cycle took care of it, cleaning the water as effectively and more artistically than I could ever do. I’ve always loved the rain.
I saw how rough and scratchy the deserts were without it, and so I used lotion on them, and you should have seen how they stretched away under the sun. This is the earth at its most honest, shaved and scrubbed down to bare bones, golden as a Mexican woman’s skin and stretching away in polished slopes and dunes as gracefully carved as her shoulder blades and the small of her back.
Australia and New Zealand were doing alright on their own for the most part, so I just gave them a quick anti-bacterial legislation rinse to get rid of any lingering problems in their relations with indigenous peoples and refugees and sat back to admire the untamed natural beauty.
When I was finished the earth was so shiny and beautiful. The rain forests were glossy, the deserts smooth, the sun beat down on the mountains as they rose above the prairies and grasslands with their thousands of wildflowers, and the glittering snowy parts shown brightly. She felt relaxed and ready to take on the day again. The sweet-smelling, exotic fruit ripening in the sun worked like aromatherapy, and she used some coconut oil and an orange tree on her cuticles to round things out.
So she dried off and got dressed; and then she pushed up her sleeves and went back to work, cleaning up our messes and doing her best to feed all those children in India and Africa another meal.
