Live and breathe, and eat and shit, and work and sleep, and die in the dirt. Written in the loose language of law but with no parchment or pen, lines of pros, equations and artistry, a speck of dust on the wind. Atoms in electromagnetic orbit around each other; once observed, found to be, themselves, as well as others, at the same moment in one place and another. A blurry line between an existence and a shared hallucination. We are all so intricate and simple at the same time. We are the sum of our parts made from the earth; all one and the same.
What are we striving to achieve? Does what we do matter to eternity, modernity, introspective contemplation, temporal and spiritual equilibrium, menstrual cycles, toddler daycare, or the earthworms beneath our feet, waiting, just waiting for all this meaning to finally end so that they can begin. Oh, and how they have already begun. This cycle is everything. Try as you might, they will lay you down in a six foot hole or turn you to ash. Try as you might to stop your decay, ultimately the earthworms will get to you. We build it up, and time strips it away. Dust to dust.
Some say we are descendants of apes, I implore that we are also descendants of dirt. This dirt? How could we be even remotely related to this crud in my shoe, the film on my car window, the stain in my britches? This is no way to think of dirt. Dirt is alive. Living dirt is all around us, some of it suffers but that's generally our doing. Suffering is almost always our (humans) doing. Still, this is no way to think of humans, we are not separate from dirt or its suffering. You believe you are clean from the waters of our mechanical sewage system? Dirt is there in your treated and chemically sterilized H2O. Sure chemicals kill the dirt, but it is still there. You eat dirt everyday, I don't care who you are. Yeah, dirt is everywhere. If you believe in evolution, and I hope you do, then you know all life on earth started out as a tiny speck in the primordial soup. You are the great great, to the power of 100 grandchild of an amoeba, who died to become part of fertile soil on the shore, which in turn, created the conditions for the first land based plant life on this planet. The first dirt.
So what is dirt exactly? Dirt is generally categorized as displaced soil; dirt has a grittier sounding edge to it. In one handful of soil there can be as many as a million microbes. Both animal, and plant, or flora/fauna, bacteria, fungus, and virus, can thrive in that one handful. other organic material ranging from pieces of larger decaying plants or animal, to feces, to rocks and minerals which make up the largest percentage of soil. Of course there are gasses in there too filling the spaces. That's right, to a microbe a pocket of air invisible to the naked eye is the grand canyon, and that continues on forever in this infinitesimal landscape. This new category of soil particulates; plastics and industrial waste, is one I regret to report. Which reminds me, bio(natural) chemicals are in the soil as well.
Importantly dirt is also a carbon sink, holding those very building blocks you are made of, keeping them out of the atmosphere and in stable form. In a handful of dirt you could be holding sand, silt and clay, humus, parts of the Earth's core and billions of years of stored sunlight. You might even grab hold of larger organisms like a lace wing larvae, wood-louse, perhaps a centipede. Roots from trees, rain from the sky, pollen and seeds blown in on air currents from across the sea. Dirt is everything that was and is everything to come. You owe your life to dirt, so give it some god damn respect.
You, me, every single little thing, and dirt, inseparable, from birth to death. What is clean anyway?
What are we striving to achieve? Does what we do matter to eternity, modernity, introspective contemplation, temporal and spiritual equilibrium, menstrual cycles, toddler daycare, or the earthworms beneath our feet, waiting, just waiting for all this meaning to finally end so that they can begin. Oh, and how they have already begun. This cycle is everything. Try as you might, they will lay you down in a six foot hole or turn you to ash. Try as you might to stop your decay, ultimately the earthworms will get to you. We build it up, and time strips it away. Dust to dust.
Some say we are descendants of apes, I implore that we are also descendants of dirt. This dirt? How could we be even remotely related to this crud in my shoe, the film on my car window, the stain in my britches? This is no way to think of dirt. Dirt is alive. Living dirt is all around us, some of it suffers but that's generally our doing. Suffering is almost always our (humans) doing. Still, this is no way to think of humans, we are not separate from dirt or its suffering. You believe you are clean from the waters of our mechanical sewage system? Dirt is there in your treated and chemically sterilized H2O. Sure chemicals kill the dirt, but it is still there. You eat dirt everyday, I don't care who you are. Yeah, dirt is everywhere. If you believe in evolution, and I hope you do, then you know all life on earth started out as a tiny speck in the primordial soup. You are the great great, to the power of 100 grandchild of an amoeba, who died to become part of fertile soil on the shore, which in turn, created the conditions for the first land based plant life on this planet. The first dirt.
Importantly dirt is also a carbon sink, holding those very building blocks you are made of, keeping them out of the atmosphere and in stable form. In a handful of dirt you could be holding sand, silt and clay, humus, parts of the Earth's core and billions of years of stored sunlight. You might even grab hold of larger organisms like a lace wing larvae, wood-louse, perhaps a centipede. Roots from trees, rain from the sky, pollen and seeds blown in on air currents from across the sea. Dirt is everything that was and is everything to come. You owe your life to dirt, so give it some god damn respect.
You, me, every single little thing, and dirt, inseparable, from birth to death. What is clean anyway?
