The Colorado River

Water in a river flows to the ocean, when it is allowed to. The Colorado River is not allowed to. Its waters are stopped up by four large dams, behind which placid lakes fill with silt as the humans around it slowly slip away whatever water does not get evaporated by the sun. I think of the valleys and gorges these artificially lakes have hidden and in some cases destroyed. The water released from the dams gets channeled into canals that snake across desert plateaus to fields hundreds of miles away, in the agricultural valleys of California.

A tiny bit of water does escape the dams and the canals, and then it empties into the Gulf of Mexico, as water has been doing for thousands of years. 

But what should be a mighty river is but only a small, muddy creek. 

This is what I think of when I think of the people in Egypt, or anywhere else where freedom of expression is limited, controlled, and manipulated. 

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