It has recently come to my attention, through no act of volition, that the most persistent substance in my life is dust. Dust settles on my piano, though I never play it. Dust settles on the upper lip of the mirror, though I rarely look that high. Dust, I am convinced, is a kind of memory—a record of intention without follow-through.
This is not a metaphor. I am allergic to dust. I wake up with swollen eyes. I vacuum, and it returns. I wipe the bookshelf and find it has regrouped. It is, in this sense, a highly competent insurgency.
A friend told me recently that most dust is made of skin cells. I find this grotesque and strangely intimate. We live in our own snow globe of dead selves. It is not romantic. But perhaps it is something close.
I remember once, when I was thirteen, seeing the dust dance in a beam of morning light. It had settled on the air itself, not falling, not rising. Suspended. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and I did not tell anyone. Not because it was secret, but because I lacked the language to make it unembarrassing. I wonder what else I have not said, for this reason.
There is a question I have been meaning to ask: What did we think was going to happen? I don’t mean in life generally. I mean just now. Just this decade. This hour. What was the plan?
My plan was to become a better version of myself, quietly and without applause. I thought I could read books until I understood the world. I thought I could ignore certain trends and perhaps outlive them. I thought I would feel less like a fraud by now.
Instead I find myself writing to you, dear reader, who may or may not be real. I find myself concerned with whether I should keep the landline connected, even though no one calls it but a woman named Doris who always sounds surprised that I am not her grandson.
I find myself deeply moved by the sight of a rabbit crossing a gravel road. Not because it is symbolic, but because it is so unbothered.
If I could write only one thing, I would write this: Your life is happening, even when you are not narrating it. Even when you are not improving. Even when you are not trying.
There is no message. Only dust, and breath, and the way light finds a path through both.
Yours in half-hearted defiance,
Booktrovert #43
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