The dust of days, so often overlooked in favor of the clean slate, especially at the beginning of a year, 365 days not yet lived. It’s not without its inspiration, this charcoal slate with pine border, edged perfectly, and full-length piece of chalk ready to make dust, powdered words.
To live only by clean slate is to erase with abandon, as if dust does not exist but it does. There is power in pausing at the effects of erasing. In reflection, we expand our life lens, as well as turn a discerning eye.
Who knew there was such power in dust? Gives new meaning to a clean slate and its purpose, not to confine but to note repetition and revelation. Know the difference.
It’s in the dust, which may seem a mundane way to start a fresh day, much less a new year. Yet, few bells and whistles have the staying power of the mundane. It always surrounds, buoys us, until we spot a speck on the horizon. Mundane is as endless as it is reliable.
As my lifetime lengthens, most days seem repetitive but there is a danger in dismissing any moment as a known. Nature doesn’t repeat itself so much as it offers us similar opportunities to try our hand again. Life explodes without reservation, as scary as it is wonderful.
When I enjoy a quiet day in the world that is my grain of sand, I know life is escalating elsewhere, and I am grateful to wait my turn for it will come. Every day has its dust.
If morning pain is off to a strong start, meditative breaths clear the drama that can so easily make pain more than it is. Pain need not dominate, for with the day, it is dust, ultimately.
And that bit of joy is what put me to poking around the dust of my slate. There’s perspective in words now powder, all that experience–unexpected, unresolved, unlimited–promise and passion, slate after slate, days of dust.
In more years than I can remember, at least twenty, this has been Christmas with a tree, white in light with pine cones nestled among branches, green and purple mice, and snowflake star, forever gifts for the heart.
As for the slates that clean, I mind their dust.
Aim for Even posts offer equanimity a dose at a time. No day or dose is ever the same, even if the aim is. You may read about the origins of Aim for Even here or on this site’s About page.
Aim For Even: The Daily Dose 
Fantastic post, Karen – and my thoughts exactly. It is too easy to enter each new year with plans for a clean slate, one that is inevitably drawn with the dust of what has gone. But as you say, there is benefit in understanding it. All the very best for 2019! It will, I think, be an interesting year for the planet, shall we say (in the sense of that old proverb). But there is some hope that we will gain a better picture of whatever conclusion awaits the current cycle.
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I am late in responding to this lovely comment, Matthew. The best to you as well in 2019! I agree that we are getting a glimpse of the end of a cycle. Here in the States, it is revelation upon revelation (already) but I see it as a beginning.
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how right you are about the danger of “dismissing any moment as a known.’ Whether we know it or not, at every moment we perch on the razor’s edge of enlightenment.
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Oh, Craig! I love that phrase, “the razor’s edge of enlightenment.” ❤
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