Life As Dust

Dust in one's life (jolioslo.blogspot.com/2009/12/dust-light-nature-spring.html)

“One life- a little gleam of time between two eternities.”(Thomas Carlyle) Once I read this line I started wondering if life in fact was nothing else but a “gleam of time” between two tiny dust particles, particles which we either struggle to sweep away or we choose to embrace dearly and make them part of our life. How many times did it happen to you to just go on the street and feel like suffocating because of some pretty annoying dust? If you leave in a clean, neat environment then dust certainly was out of the picture, yet you certainly did manage to see it floating tiny in the gleaming light of the sun so you probably know by now about its existence.

I know by now or at least I presume I do have the slightest idea about how it feels like being a human being on this planet of ours called earth. I have faced many mornings with my eyes half closed and my hands ferociously looking for the much needed sip of coffee as if every particle of my body depended on that sweet or plane as you prefer it, black-brownish, nice aromatic substance, I have seen many magnificent sunrises and equally marvelous and full of color sunsets and as the night installed itself serenely on my street I started looking for the soft friendship of a pillow, one that would come to witness my dreams. Therefore I do have the audacity to say that I have discovered life in my way, much like each and every one of you did with each day, each sunset, each night and each morning that passed.

Wings of dust (wings-of-dust.deviantart.com/art/But-time-never-forgives-44165837)

Though I may seem and sound crazy I have to tell you that I woke up today to just ask myself after ingurgitating forcefully rather than willingly in my outside walks millions and trillions of dust particles, how would it feel like if I one day woke up to see that I am nothing else but dust? I would clearly try to make myself known to the others, let them know that I am there and while doing this a mean thought crossed my tiny me “What better way to do this if not by suffocating the others?” I know it would suffice to just be a serpent to do this, yet since I am no serpent but just a dust particle I have to content myself with this and as people say, get used to it.

Those feeling pity for me, if any, should know that though tiny I survive in a whole multitude of environments, including here the streets, your house and even your office…as such it could be told that I am one of your own too and I do get to work, therefore I could never but never be accused of being lazy. At least this gets to be my pleading in favor of me and my tiny fellow buds and family.

We get to travel for miles and miles, suspended somewhere in the air and the more we gather there, the more acute does the suffocating feeling gets to be. Yet sometimes dust can get angry and tired of so much floating and whenever this happens we get to be blown for thousands of miles and sometimes gather together to form what people have come to know under the name of dust storms. It could be said that in those moments we sort of get dusty, yet not screeching when moving but instead getting more alert.

Here comes the dust (http://blog.burningman.com/building-brc/here-comes-the-dust/)

It is true that we sort of make a pact with the wind, much like in the famous song you probably know “My friend the wind”, you know the one telling us that our “friend the wind will come from the hills / When dawn will rise, he’ll wake me again / My friend the wind will tell me a secret / He shares with me, he shares with me”. Yet, this time the wind combines with the dust particles to just constitute a force of destruction. In this case getting angry brings the fine particles of dust to simply blind people instead of just suffocating them one per one quite easily and sometimes without notice, one ticket on which they should write “Hey, I am just planning to make you choke each and every day and at some point you may even get used to noticing me and my fellow tiny friends gathering together. It is true you may be unable to see us when the weather outside tends to be dark and gloomy. In those moments it could be stated that we are endowed with the magnificent attribute of invisibility, yet lucky us we get to “sleep” on whatever surface we may encounter, turning it into our ideal king size bed. You get to see us better whenever we get to be thrown under a streak of light, a streak of light that makes us look better in your eyes, more attractive to say so, because most of the time we get to be considered nothing else but some detestable dust particles.”

Dust in light (http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/ExampleMapsLightBeams.html)

Light can work real wonders on us and on the things around us. Light and dust… if we were to discover the consistence of those magnificent colors we sometimes see at sunset. The sunset in its entire glorious splendor is not the result of the work of some really talented painter splashing colors around him but more the work of the not so splendid or magnificent dust, nothing else but “plain old dust hanging around in the air.”

It gets to be as old as us, accompanying us in our morning, evenings and afternoons and even detestable and suffocating as it happens to be it gets to “paint” dramatic sunsets and sometimes swirl around in stormy dust storm bringing in the same dramatic notes yet on much different strings than those being touched when witnessing a dusty colored sunset.

There seems to be nothing poetic in dust, nothing but sunsets and the way we may choose to see it shining like gold in the morning light (if we have the eyes upon us) and this is precisely why I chose to end my dusty pleading with the words of George Herman who once said “Watch my dust.”11