Dancing with Darkness

The battle slogs on relentlessly.

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The motes of dust dance in the light, gracefully swirling inside the beam that reveals what the darkness hides. There is no trace of even the slightest movement of air. What makes the motes dance? Some sort of electromagnetic energy? Something else? I don’t know. Where did all this dust come from? If the beam of light reveals the truth. I’m living, and somehow breathing, in an omnipresent haze of dust.

It’s mystical and alarming.

What is dust but dirt that is lighter than air.

Genesis tells us we are made of dirt and immortal soul. The two are forever in conflict. We spend much of our life in combat with dirt. The battle is unending and ultimately futile. Joni Mitchel has referred to us in song as, ”billion-year-old carbon”. That’s half right. We are billion-year-old carbon, but, we are animated by the light of our souls. Darkness and light dancing as one, until released by our ascent to eternity.

That will happen some glorious day.

Until then, the kitchen needs cleaning, and . . and . . . The battle slogs on relentlessly. Clean is a word that can only be used figuratively. Nothing on this Earth is ever truly clean. We delude ourselves with its achievability. Worse yet, we drive ourselves crazy in pursuit of a goal that is completely impossible.

The struggle with dirt is as old as the first day.

There is a telling song from the pioneer days called The Housewife’s Lament. These are some selected lines the housewife sung as she wielded her broom:

“In March it’s the mud, it’s slush in December, The midsummer breezes are loaded with dust, In Fall the leaves litter in muddy September, The wallpaper rots and the candlesticks rust”.

I spend my whole life in a struggle with dirt, There’s nothing that lasts but trouble and dirt.

In the end, she dies - and is buried in dirt.

I imagine modern housewives will empathize with her plight. We can walk around dirt. We can walk through dirt. We cannot get rid of dirt - scrub though we may. I recall the words of a wife, newly married, about the built-up residue on the walls of her new husband’s old house. Her husband dismissed it as only patina. She said, ”I scrubbed and scrubbed, and I still can’t get rid of that dammed patina”.

Compromise is the only option. Dirt’s not going away. We must learn to live with it. It may be better to think of it as “patina” or “billion-year-old carbon”. So much more pleasant than a word like dirt.

Myself, I try to clean at least once per quarter whether it’s needed or not.

We are compelled to dance with the darkness we might as well do it gracefully.

Like dust motes swirling in peaceful harmony.

By K. L. Shipley

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