NEW EAST VILLAGE TIMES - March 1, 1988
Ah, dust. Not a single day goes by that I don’t find myself staring at it, wondering if I should vacuum it, study it, or leave it alone out of respect for its impressive longevity. Dust is, in the grand scheme of things, one of our most constant and loyal companions. It’s there every morning when I wake up, gathering around me in small, insistent piles as if it’s been waiting all night for my attention. People say love is patient, but I would argue dust is far more so. It waits, it collects, it outlasts even our best intentions to clean it away.
They say all dust was once stardust—tiny fragments of the cosmos, glimmering across eons before settling down to annoy us on our bookshelves. I admit, it’s a nice thought. But when I look at the dust on my dresser, I don’t see "stardust"; I see remnants of my breakfast cereal and, occasionally, my mother’s disappointment in my housekeeping skills. And yet, who am I to judge what dust once was? Perhaps there’s a grand, cosmic history behind each speck, which means that every time I dust, I’m essentially erasing a little slice of universal history.
But dust didn’t become a problem, in my view, until we started noticing it. I suspect people in the Middle Ages had no issues with dust because they didn’t have the time to worry about it. They were too busy surviving plagues and feudalism to care if their tables had a fine layer of particles. Then came the Industrial Revolution, and suddenly, dust wasn’t just annoying—it was hazardous. It was black and gritty and seemed to get everywhere, like an unwanted guest that suddenly moves in and starts making demands. And it was at this time, I believe, that humanity’s futile war with dust began in earnest.
But what is dust, exactly? Scientists tell us it’s about 70% human skin cells, which, when you think about it, is probably why it seems so determined to hang around—it’s just us, hanging around ourselves. The rest is made up of pollen, hair, fabric fibers, and, if you’re particularly unlucky, insect parts. But why, I ask, does dust have to exist at all? Why can’t we just exist without shedding little pieces of ourselves into the air? Is that too much to ask? Apparently, it is.
So, we clean. Or rather, we try to clean, only for the dust to come back as if it’s performing some kind of dance routine in the quiet of the night. You sweep, you dust, you mop, and the next day, it’s back, as if to remind you that, no matter how diligent you are, you’ll never get rid of it completely. You’ll have your small victory for a few hours, and then, quietly, it will return to reclaim its rightful place on your furniture.
In a way, I feel a kind of kinship with the dust. It’s just as persistent as I am, as stubborn, and in some odd way, just as misunderstood. After all, if the dust is composed of us, then aren’t we technically waging a battle against ourselves every time we clean? Isn’t dust, in a very real sense, just a highly distributed autobiography? The sum total of our lives, gently piling up on our coffee tables.
Museums understand this in their own way. They display artifacts of dust-ridden history as if to say, "Look at this! A fragment of a world long gone!" But to me, the true relics are not the sculptures or the vases—they’re the dust layers that have settled upon them over centuries. I imagine some museum curator, desperately trying to brush away the centuries, only to realize he’s removing a little bit of history each time. It’s ironic, isn’t it? The thing they try to remove is also the thing that connects us to the past. Every sweep of the brush, every wipe of the cloth—it’s a little act of historical erasure.
In conclusion, I suppose I’m not so much asking us to stop dusting entirely—heaven knows, some surfaces should be clean. But perhaps we should be a bit more selective, a little more respectful of the dust. After all, it’s been here longer than we have, and if I had to bet, I’d say it’ll be here long after we’re gone. So, next time you pick up the dust cloth, maybe pause for a moment. Take a deep breath (ideally not too deep, given the dust), and think to yourself: Is this really my battle? Or am I just erasing the quiet, dedicated work of millions of years, one swipe at a time?