On the way to the office today, I came across a huge dust storm.
I really don’t know where so much dust came from! It was as if someone had put me straight into a scene from Interstellar – the one before the discovery of the new planet. There was dust everywhere and people trying to flee from it, struggling to escape.
I don’t really know if it was a dust storm, but it really did feel like one.
There was dust everywhere.
Dust that refuses to settle, dust that clouds your vision, dust on your face even if you wrap your thickest scarf as tight as you can. Dust that you can taste as you run a tongue across your dry lips. Dust that you can breathe in and smell. Dust in your hair and dust under your feet.
Dust that refuses to settle.
I thought however right or wrong the Interstellar folk might have been in their imagination of colonizing a new planet, surely, their idea of the “End of the Earth” was spot on.
Dust that signifies a dying Earth. No matter how hard you try to keep it off, always finding a way to cloud over people and places. Dust that covers even the last slivers of hope. Dust that threatens life.
Dust – its teeny weeny specks showing their might; uncontrollable, haunting every thought; washing over everything like waves.
As I made my way through the clouds of dust, I thought that if there ever is an “End of the Earth”, this definitely will be one of its characteristics; dust that refuses to settle.
Cut to later that day, as I reach back home.
As soon as I unlock the door and step in, a loud gushing noise screams for my attention. I run into the kitchen, only to land in ankle deep water. I see the kitchen tap gushing wildly (open since God knows when). Buckets of good, clean water – literally gone down the drain.
I sigh. It takes me quite a while to mop and drain away the excess water.
And as I scrub and slosh at the water over and over again, the irony of the situation hits me. I feel like I am washing away the dust – as if this was a way to literally “dust it off”. The dust that refuses to settle, perhaps it is powerless in front of gushing, splashing water.
I do hope that if there ever is a “Dying Earth” and dust storms, may there also be torrential rains and splashes of cool water to wash the dust away.
And may the water win, over the dust that refuses to settle.
