Dust as Destiny and Metaphor

My eyes scan the surfaces of my smallish Brooklyn apartment, dismayed by the density of dust all around me. On the media console, with its black lacquer finish, the dust forms a gray matte haze—but it scintillates when the sun hits it just right, casting a silvery shimmer along the path of light, illuminating many of the individual particles. For a moment, I think of the night sky in Death Valley: stars upon stars, everywhere, all around you.

The white baseboards are less majestic. Along their top edge, the dust thickens, darker now, trending toward brown. Less sparkle, more grime. The area rug and couch slipcover look fine at first glance, but when I narrow my focus, I spot strands of hair and frayed bits of lonely fiber—exiles clinging to the fabric’s edge.

Finally, my gaze settles on the recessed paneling of the ochre kitchen cabinets. Along the bottom edge, a new duststead is forming. On the vertical surface, fledgling dust bunnies dangle for dear life, swaying softly in the breeze that moves through the room.

Didn’t I just clean?

Didn’t I just wipe these surfaces down?

I did. But it doesn’t matter. The war against dust is un-winnable.

Cleaning—especially dusting—isn’t a project you finish, like a painting or a photograph. It’s a maintenance ritual, like meditation and exercise, or any other practice whose primary function is to maintain the illusion of a stable, static system.

Dust is destiny. My destiny. Your destiny. The destiny of every macroscopic thing that ever was or ever will be. Dust is our daily reminder that entropy always wins—that living and unraveling are synonymous. Unless we shift how we engage with its meaning, see it for the material that it is and the metaphors it can be, we’ll keep playing the wrong game—like stealing second base in football or bringing a knife to a gunfight. Nobody likes a dirty apartment, but the dust game isn’t really about cleanliness. It’s about social cachet, about performing the appearance of order.

Dust is decay. The most mundane evidence of rising disorder. The quiet residue left behind after renewal. Each mote is a detail—a fragment of a larger, once-coherent whole, undone by time, by nature, by the relentless churn of things. Skin cells you shed without notice. Hair follicles left behind on a brush or in the bathroom sink. Bits of bark and leaf from the honeylocust outside your window that blew in one enchanted morning when you were too in love to care. And if you did notice, maybe you smiled at how the light on those tiny, sparkling flecks reminded you of shooting stars.

Or fireflies.

Because dust isn’t just death and disorder. Dust is also life. It's a sign that I inhabit this body, in this space, at this time.

Dust is a gift.

It’s like the scar on my abdomen from when my appendix burst at sixteen. Appendicitis is typically caught early, and the surgery is done laparoscopically, leaving a mark only a few centimeters long, discharged the next day.

I wasn't so lucky. My scar is almost five inches long.

When my appendix burst, the ER doctors had to cut wide—draining the infection, clearing out what they could. Still, I was in the hospital for sixteen days, much of it touch-and-go. I got MRSA. And C. diff. My veins collapsed. I drifted in and out of consciousness, waking just long enough to meet the loving, lying eyes of my parents as they told me I’d be fine—though they had no way of knowing that.

Sometimes I trace the scar with my finger. It’s faded now, but still there. And in the context of this essay, it means something specific: that I can reflect on my scar means I’m still here. It’s my version of Descartes’ doubt: I see this scar, therefore I am.

I could have died that day. A hundred years ago, I certainly would have.

I guess I was lucky.

That scar is like the dust I’m surrounded by. Each mote a part of the music in the great symphony of order and disorder. If the breath is the attack and the body the sustain, dust is the decay—but decay in the musical sense, not the negative one. It’s the slow fade that gives the sound its shape and provides a transition to the next note. Dust says my life continues, that it’s still growing, still evolving. Each moment may bring me closer to my unraveling, but the dust reminds me I haven’t yet unraveled.

I can still dance. Still laugh. Still love.

The next time my eyes catch dust in the room, I won’t rush to wipe it away. I’ll pause. I’ll try to see the universe inside it—like William Blake looking into his grain of sand.