Home > #OneLove, Animals, Change, Cycles, Journey, Memories, Path, Process > Dust Particles In A Shaft Of Light

Dust Particles In A Shaft Of Light

light and dust

A beam of sunlight filters in through an open window of a room bathed in shadow. The air is still. In the ray of light, dust particles bounce off of one another, illuminated. The fine concentration of light is filled with tiny, radiant specs that are suspended in space, and yet, in motion: floating, shimmering, tumbling together, touching, separating, touching once more.


The physics of it does not matter. The dust-air interaction does not matter. Brownian motion does not matter. Lucretius’ remarkable vision poem of atoms randomly moving in an infinite universe does not matter. Nor does Einstein’s explanation of it. Here’s what matters: You can see it. It is the dust of the world, dazzling in the light.


This is your whole life, right here, right now, contained and elevated, in the ephemeral ray of light pouring in. And you tell yourself: this is the dust of me, the dust around me, what I breathe in, what I breathe out. The dust is filled with thoughts, memories. Mine, yours. Dust from old books. Dust of letters I’ve opened, of papers torn. Dust from my son’s drawings. Dust from cars as their tires leave behind bits of journeys that float through my window, into the beam. Dust of a tissue from my mother’s purse. Dust of my cats, here, and then not here, alive in an eternal way, I suppose, luminous in this narrow beam. Tears evaporate and find their way into the shining zig zag motion. Cherish what you have, and what you have lost. Look for it all, shimmering and tumbling, as dust particles in a shaft of light.

dust particles in light

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. ~Kurt Vonnegut
RIP, kitty

beautiful kitty

tica and kitty

Advertisement
  1. Eileen OToole
    March 10, 2015 at 9:51 pm

    beautiful….

  2. March 13, 2015 at 1:29 am

    Reblogged this on General Secretary.

  3. March 13, 2015 at 9:25 am

    I grieve with thee

  4. August 13, 2015 at 8:21 am

    Having just lost my 17 year old cat Molly, sitting in the living room with the Sun coming through the Austrian blinds, and the dust dancing. We are easily in everything, your piece has been a kindness. Thank you.

  5. August 15, 2015 at 5:17 am

    Cats have such a light step, but leave a crushing weight on the heart when they leave us.
    Sympathies to you and your family, Brian, on the loss of Molly. May the sun through your Austrian blinds always offer comfort.

  1. No trackbacks yet.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: