Ashes and Dust | Catherine Viel

By Catherine Viel, November 4, 2021

(Golden Age of Gaia)

November 2, 2021

The dates drop
from calendars, in order…
I steal each second
grain by grain
from the hourglass, my hands
cover themselves with ashes.
~André Velter, tr. Marilyn Hacker, Sand and Ashes



Every day I wake up feeling funny, weird, not right.

Every day I also wake up thinking, today I must do neglected tasks.

And instead, I am drawn to writing and drifting around the house and gazing out the window at the slow-paced autumn garden. Doing the absolute minimum that must be done.

I have the dubious privilege of being semiretired and can elect to do only what’s necessary to keep body and soul together.

So the question becomes, can I be at peace with things not being done?

*****



I don’t actually wake up every single morning feeling weird. But most mornings I am aware that whatever I tell myself I should do that day, it’s unlikely to happen. And that feels uncomfortable and defeatist, somehow.

The trouble is, day after week after month goes by, and it doesn’t seem to matter that I haven’t done some things. Would it matter if I never did them?

The lack of motivation is stupendous.

*****



The sun quietly fills the room. I hear the hawk calling not too far away, and another hawk answering. Perhaps there will be fledglings in the spring.

I looked at a dusty tabletop a while ago and thought: the dust doesn’t care where it is.

Perhaps it enjoys glittering in the air as the sun strikes it. It settles lightly into the carpet and works its way down. In every crevice, on every surface, it adheres.

The dust doesn’t mind where it lands. I am the one who doesn’t like seeing it on a tabletop, who frets at it grinding into the carpet. The glass over pictures, the very walls attract particulate with a faint magnetic force.

There’s probably dust settling on me at this very moment.

*****



The thing I keep forgetting is that every molecule of everything that is, is perfect. Where it is, as it is, when it is, how it is.

It’s like peace and acceptance have been reduced to something almost pre-matter, so that they permeate even things that aren’t aware of their own existence.

How much more should I, who claim self-awareness, embody this peacefulness, this acceptance? What prevents me from being as straightforward as that mote of dust, taking its time finding the perfect place to land?

There’s no hurry. No worry. It’s not thinking it should be doing something else. It’s not thinking it should be something else.

One could argue that it’s not thinking at all, but I won’t take the possibility of self-awareness away from even a speck of dust.

*****



Drifting laziness steals over me. What does it matter if the dust becomes a micrometer thicker on that gray-furred table? The dust itself doesn’t care. Why should I?

I can call myself lazy or I can call myself wise. What I’m doing doesn’t change. Only my self-labeling can alter. From dissatisfaction to neutrality and on into acceptance. And after acceptance, peace.

Like the embers of a fire burning down, settling to soft gray ash, later rising and transmogrifying into dust. A mysterious alchemy I can observe but not direct.

I can be at peace with that.