No heinous decisions were eve made in a tub. We should have all of our electoral candidates paraded in baths, nude, but raised high enough to be modest. PG elections. Dry skins, fake tans, warts and ominous birthmarks to be interpreted by a new breed of mystic-analyst that would pop up on the evening news. Exposure. Some would sit erect and wave, as if it was natural, while some would meekly peek over the side, barely a slosh, hardly a sound. Neither would indicate that the potential nominee has a superior or innate disposition that would lend itself to leading a village, or a country, but they would be willing to be vulnerable, and besides, what a lovely metaphor: a clean slate. Clean can be such a dirty word.

We still don't have water and I no longer have confidence in this bucket full of what could have been described as water only days ago. Thank god you sent me peanut butter.

I suppose that Marat died in the bath. It is said that he wrote letters there. Plotting from his flooded pulpit. How apocalyptic. The Maya believed that the damp cave was at the threshold of two worlds, and if this is the case then Marat had one foot in death and one in life, so I suppose he was at the mercy of this receptacle. Maybe it shaped him. 

Bush…. Okay, fine, fuck, Hitler. Hitler had a bathtub, I don't know if he used it but I recall seeing a photo spread in Life magazine as a kid: Lee Miller in Hitler's tub. She had gone to one of his apartments (funny how history allows for certain kinds of real-estate labels, imagine she had gone to Hitler's 'studio loft' in Munich.), derobed - is it derobed? -, and climbed in. Dry. It's incredibly intimate when you think about it - who shares baths. Lovers, families. Us. A space carved out for nakedness. For intimacy. I use to think about all of the people who had died and had lived in my apartment when I lived at the bottom of the mountain. Now I worry I'll think about all of the people who have been naked in my bathroom. When I am able to use it again. I wonder how different those numbers would be.

Maybe if I take off my uniform and lie in the dry basin I'll think differently, engaging in a tradition beyond some selfishly hygienic cause. The odds are 50/50. When you read this letter I would like you to try the same and write me about it. Lie naked in the bath, no water, and think of me. Of everyone who came before.  

-Imaginary Peacekeeper