AND THE LORD GOD MADE MAN FROM THE DUST OF THE GROUND

“I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy of air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire – why, it appeareth no other thing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals – and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”

                                                            -Hamlet

           I’ve heard that dust is an ancient thing. I think about just how ancient it is as I notice a thin layer has settled on the cherry-wood bookcases in front of me. I glance at the titles of hundreds of books; philosophy books, novels, biographies, historiographies, and anthologies; pretexts, post-scripts and prefaces. No doubt the dust is nestled atop the thousands of pages in front of me, but the words within these books do not care about the dust; they have passed unscathed through the natural world. From the mind of their creator, to the print, to the press, to immortality, the words are but frequencies now, bouncing off the heavenly bodies above, blanketing space and time. IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD, AND IT WAS COVERED WITH DUST.

 Poets tell us that to write down an idea is to immortalize it:

            “One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
               But came the waves and washéd it away:
                 Agayne I wrote it with a second hand,
                 But came the tyde, and made my paynes his pray.
            “Vayne man,” sayd she, “that doest in vaine assay,
                 A mortall thing so to immortalize,
                 For I my selve shall lyke to this decay,
                 And eek my name bee wiped out lykewize.”
             “Not so,” quod I, “let baser things devize
                 To dy in dust, but you shall live by fame:
                 My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,
                 And in the heavens wryte your glorious name.
             Where whenas death shall all the world subdew,
                 Our love shall live, and later life renew.
                                              -Edmund Spenser Sonnet 75

Spenser wanted to immortalize his love object; he wanted to protect her from the inevitability of becoming but dust, so he wrote a sonnet about her, and once recorded in the memory of the universe it becomes something that can’t be un-known.

           I’ve heard that household dust is in large part human skin. This information might sound disturbing to some. It doesn’t bother me. Of course, dust is made up of various other things, too: dirt, hair, wax, bug parts, animal parts, people parts, planet parts, star parts, and so on. As I think about this, I scan the cherry-wood bookcases and a large purple spine catches my eye; The Astronomy Encyclopedia. I pick it up, brush it off, and flip through it until I find INTERPLANETARY DUST PARTICLE. It turns out that many forms of interplanetary dust particles exist and along with them many names for the various particulates: INTERPLANETARY MEDIUM, INTERSTELLAR DUST, INTERSTELLAR GRAIN, INTERSTELLAR MATTER, INTERSTELLAR MOLECULES, MICROMETEORITE, et cetera: “For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and humans have no advantage over the animals; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again.” – Ecclesiastes 3:19-20.

 This isn’t such a bad thing.

Though no adequate words exist, this is my tribute to you, Guy Daniel Parnell. I did not know you that well, but I sat next to you for two semesters. You affected my life. Rest in peace.

A "Response" to a "Letter" that I "Received" in the Mail.

To whom this may “concern”:

             You must be hurting for business. I wonder what type of business you might hope to attract, offering me, a “neighbor in our community,” (though I am not really because the home of your dealership is “2910 White Settlement Road, Fort Worth, TX 76107”) a $1000.00 savings card in the form of that most iconic of Western monetary metaphors: the credit card. Exhaustive first sentence, am I right? Well, there is a lot to be said, so buckle up.

             When I open your “advertisement” and read, in Bold and in Blue it says Congratulations! When I read the fine print it states that I should “Immediately remove the attached $1000 Savings card and place it in your wallet. This card is valuable and may be applied toward the purchase of service, parts and accessories. Card is valid at all Autobahn locations.” Now, I wager that if I were to ask that the $1000 dollar savings be applied directly to the bill of exactly $1000 dollars you would regret to inform me that the advertisement clearly implies something else, and I would have to agree, but only because I have been desensitized by the sheer multitude of advertisements employing fraudulence and “implication” in their marketing strategies. And, that’s precisely what you have done here. You have implied that I have $1000.00 to spend on a vehicle while also implying simultaneously that said $1000.00 dollars is a percentage of the cost you would absorb on a much larger bill. But we all know that you really wouldn’t absorb anything, you just wouldn’t profit as much as you would on a pre- or post-Savings Card day, (then again, if I were to fall victim to your ploy, maybe your salespeople could wiggle their way into my psyche and get me to add on a few “extras” in order to cover the pseudo-absorption that you so tepidly “suggest” above, though I do pity the fool who wanders into such a psyche. It’s like four-thousand people playing Chinese checkers in a hybrid world that can only be explained as a Jackson Pollock/Salvador Dali lightshow and buffet). To the untrained eye, (though I’m not sure such eyes still cast their impressionable gaze upon the world, because, like me the rest of our culture has also figured out this so-called “strategy”) you suggest that the recipient of this “letter” has received a special privilege; you suggest that some “lucky individual” has gained an advantage. Can you not see the artifice here? Can you not see the imbedded lie? Must you be reminded that at its very core a lie is not such a distant relative of suggestion? Perhaps you should evaluate your strategy and stop lying not only to your intended audience but to yourselves. But, this is a utopian idea; I know that you will do what you must, for you are a “business,” and the end goal of any business is to profit. Romantic ideals notwithstanding, perhaps you employ a different “strategy,” one that might include integrity and honesty as its foundation. Maybe you would attract a different crowd. In fact, I think that such traits are actually more profitable in the long run of things, whether in business or in general. Nevertheless, this is merely my suggestion.[1]

 The “letter,” the one sheet of paper, the smidgen of ink, the envelope, the postage, (and the time) cost me roughly 50 cents. I am curious just how much your “advertisement” cost you? How much did the research and development, the paper, the ink, the plastic, the very production, and the postage really cost you? But, a completely different question can be and perhaps should be asked by replacing the “How” with a “What.” Perhaps the more appropriate question, then, is thus: What did sending out such an advertisement really cost you? I will be candid: I think it cost you credibility. And, for a “business” such as yours this is the most damaging and damning of consequences. All I can say is that you did it to yourself. Congratulations!

---

[1] Note: One might pay particular attention to the numerous quotation marks and italics used throughout this “letter.” It should be pointed out here that said literary devices are symbolically significant and as such are full of all sorts of implications.