The dust of the day: travels in my body and world

a close-up of a pine cone
Photo by Gaurav Kumar on Unsplash

You can judge your life by what you wash off your body, the dirt between your toes and under your nails, what comes out of your nose when you blow it. You rinse your hair, if you have it, and what goes down the drain is the detritus of what has been blowing around and through your head that day. You bleed from nose and gums, you may be sick. Your liver may not be making enough coagulant to keep your blood in your vessels. Bleed from your eye ducts and you may have inhaled poison–get help, scream and fight for it if need be. It is your right. 

Wash tears from your cheeks and taste the last bit of salt in the crease of your cheek: you may have said goodbye to a beloved person, place, or time, to the person you were and will never be again. You cried tears, of joy, of sorrow, of sympathy, of pity for yourself or another. You have had a day. It will not come back. It is swirling, dissolved in water. It wets a parched patch of earth, it goes down the drain. 

And thus you will, day after day, in the next six weeks or so, wash all your skin away. The dead cells which slough off will give way to fresh, alive cells. The blood cells will die and new ones be born. Nearly all of you, save some of your nerves which cannot take a break from their transmitting, will be made new in time. The tiny dust motes of your former self, the one you saw in the mirror and mistakenly called “I” and “me” now float in the air of your room, dancing in a sunbeam, settling into the carpet and the sheets and the clothes of others and the corners of the floor, to be swept and shaken out and washed away, dull and gray as a happy moment misremembered. 

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