TravelChick

Dust

I got back from my vacation to find a layer of dust, sand, and grit all over my apartment. I feel it on the floor and see it on the tables. This place is just a little part of the desert indoors; I have to mop and dust.

I wasn't entirely unprepared for this film of dust; when I came back from Indonesia my apartment was rather dusty, even after just a week. What I wasn't prepared for is how much sand there is swirling around outside. This evening when I left home around 6.30 the sky was dusky and hazy, swollen with dust. It clung in the air and made the sky and dirty blue.

I've lived in polluted and pollinated Atlanta, the choked air of London, and Damascene air thick with the fumes of oil burned for heat, and I'd never seen air like this. The sand particles glistened when I took a picture and came out as specks of light on my display. I may not like Doha, but living here certainly is an experience.

In Italo Calvino's Seasons in the City, he writes about a man who cannot get rid of the dust that seeps into his life and his apartment. I always remembered that story during pollen season in Atlanta, when my car would be covered with a veneer of yellow pollen, and when a mixture of pollen and dust would seep into my apartment. Doha also reminds me of the man in Seasons in the City. Calvino managed to write about something so ugly and irritating really beautifully. Sometimes I think that, with all the experiences I've had in my life, my life should inspire me to write more.

posted by Travel Chick @ 11:27 PM