I’ve never considered dust as poetic, of holding more weight than the passing of time.

But isn’t that enough? Dust is the signifier, the smallest indicator. A clue, a teller of time and place. It’s companionship is relentless. Dust is natural, and man-made.

Dust is the exposed and the exposer. We find dust, but dust also finds it’s way to us. Dust breaks boundaries and trespasses.

“Dust shares a lot of qualities with air as well as breath — they each force us to rethink boundaries of individuality as well as space. You cannot confine air and breath in a manner that our more stable contours, like skin suggests.” Parikka, J (2013)

Parikka’s essay on dust exposes some of the hard truths about media consumption and materialism. There are unending effects, spanning further and further than our media allows us to see. The essay took me a week to read, returning repeatedly to it’s poetic verse and unforgiving truths. I felt guilty sending a text message. Sometimes I wonder what writing like this is aiming to do. But it reminds you that your actions are bigger than you can see. There are consequences for what we do, and what we’re able to do is only due to the consequence of others actions. This reading has brought me back to our first Lectorial, and what I want to get out of this degree; of which so much soon-to-be obsolete media material exists for and within. This essay really reminded me that I need to make everything I do, every action, every purchase worth it. Worth it for the landfill it will almost certainly become.