Dust and the Meaning of Life

All apologies to Dusty Baker, but go Phillies!

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Dust collects.

I tend to not read too much into the ways in which specific verbs are attached to specific nouns. Like how “leaves fall” or “eagles soar.” By and large, I think the insights that can be gained from close reads on say, why the collective noun for a group of crows is “murder,” are negligible. Dust however is different. Dust collects.

Dust is a composite. It is not a singular item. Dead skin, dirt, ground-up insect carcasses, the detritus of life in minuscule. It’s a billion billion different things all comingled together. It’s a marker of the passage of time, a hint that something is wrong, a sign of incompetence, laziness, or lack of care, depending on your mood

Dust is not always a negative, however. Philip Pullman in his classic His Dark Materials trilogy centers the books around a different type of dust. Dust with a Capital D “Dust.” In these works, The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass, Dust is a metaphor for consciousness, the very stuff that makes humans human. I guess it’s irresponsible here for me to denote this representation of Dust as an entirely positive one. There are certainly any number of examples in these books of consciousness being used actively used for evil. Just as it is in the real world. On the whole though, it is largely positive.

Of course, Pullman’s Dust is not present in our world. Our dust, the dull grey kind, full of pet and human hair, clogs up vents, triggers allergic reactions. Our dust carries a vastly negative connotation. The more dust there is, the more dust is allowed to collect, the worse it is. Dusty is never a compliment, a name that someone desires. To be dusty is to lose value.

And yet, the opposite is often true as well. Antiseptic, the negative twin of dusty, is rarely a compliment either. Unless you are a hospital administrator, having your house, personality, or aesthetic described as antiseptic, without life, without flavor, is not good. Living an antiseptic life would be boring, something reserved only for your worst enemies.

This at least seems to point to the idea that there are some benefits to dust. I can think of a few examples where dust would be acceptable. Or at least not a hindrance. Imagine finding a genie’s lamp and it wasn’t dusty. You’d feel robbed. Or if you were exploring your grandparent’s attic or basement, and what you found wasn’t covered in a thick layer of dust. Even the satisfaction of removing dust, from your fan blades, or a long-neglected bookshelf, would be lost without its ability to collect.

It would seem then that the Goldilocks region would be found somewhere in the middle. Neither dusty nor anti-septic. I usually don’t buy into the idea that the middle is the best option, but in this case, I’ve written myself into a corner. I have to believe it.

I think Pullman was onto something with his description of Dust. Our dust, while it doesn’t have a soft golden glow as it does in His Dark Materials, does have a similar connection to our own consciousness. On the most basic level, it’s largely made up of us. Dead skin cells make up a large percentage of most dust. While I’m not some Ancient Greek or even Medieval philosopher who believes that our consciousness lies in our skin, it’s still a potent image. There’s also that tricky phrase of dust “collecting.” Collecting is one of those few universal experiences of human life. People collect things. Not just physical items, but memories, feelings, knowledge. Unless you’re the guy from Memento. But there has to be an exception to every rule.

Dust, because of its make-up and location is heavily tied to human life. Where people live and build and grow there is dust. This isn’t to say that dust doesn’t exist in nature. Anyone who has been to the desert has come back covered in dust, but it does tend to accumulate around people. In our dwellings, our places of work, on our things. Dust and humans are inseparable. Humanity is simply the eternal fight against dust. In this way dust, not just Dust, is a sign of our consciousness, our awareness of what it means to be human.

This is all sounding a little mystical. Life isn’t exactly a cut-and-dry thing though. A little bit of mysticism never hurt anybody anyway. This world we live in is a cruel, beautiful, bewildering place. Mostly it just doesn’t make sense. Explicating the connection between dust and people isn’t the weirdest thing I could do.

One last thought on dust. I don’t hate it. Much to my fiancé’s dismay I’m probably closer to the dusty end of the spectrum than I am the antiseptic end. The smell of dust in a barn, wiping it off an old photo album, blowing on an N64 cartridge to get it to play, these are all things I love, and hope to experience time and again. I don’t think this says anything specific about me, other than that I need to clean more, but who doesn’t? If anything, though, I do think we all need a little more dust in our lives. A better understanding of how and where our own bodies end up. Why we create dust, and what it can do. Where our detritus goes. Just like humanity, dust is not made up of one thing, but many things. The dead skin of all the people who have visited your house, the people you pass on the street, those you work with, and many more. Perhaps people that you might never meet. While we might not be able to understand it perfectly, that never-ending journey is a helpful, no, beneficial, one. Something that we all need to pay a little more attention to. It’s possible to learn from dust. It’s possible to learn a great many things. By paying attention to our dust, perhaps we can learn a little more about ourselves, and the people around us.

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