Motes

Our bathroom is bathed in light this morning. As I stood in this stream of photons, my head turned slightly towards the window, I saw a phenomenon commonly seen during summer days inside. There they all were, the usually invisible, the usually discreet, the usually unthought of; now picked out with alarming clarity: the dust motes. Hundreds and thousands of them, drifting down and rising up to fall again inside this particular zone of air illuminated in that moment. This air that we move through, breath. 

A brand of vodka - perhaps Smirnoff (I don’t drink Vodka) - brought out a special edition which features flecks of gold suspended in the alcohol. This interested me, when I first noticed it on the shelf of my local Tesco, because the gold flecks didn’t appear to be affected by gravity.  They just hung there. I reached out and turned the bottle- the flecks were reliably informed by inertia; they remained with the liquid as the bottle turned. It was as though the vodka was strangely viscous. I’m not sure what the process was, or how long it took the boffins at Smirnoff to perfect it. It impressed me though. I wondered what ingesting the gold would do to you. 

I thought of these gold flecks as I stared at the swirling motes of dust in the bathroom. We are masters at forgetting the nitty gritty of our organism. We’ve all seen the phenomenon. We know that we are constantly breathing randomised particles into ourselves. No doubt the nose, somewhere along its convoluted pathway, filters a number of these out- let’s not dwell upon the processes of bodily expulsion.  Our bodies are masters of management, we don’t need to know how it protects us; it just does it quietly. When we are reminded of the enemy though it leaves one with a strange feeling of besiegement. 

I had a flatulent roommate in my first weeks at University. Considering this sad fact one day I came to the disturbing realisation that actual particles, however infinitesimal, of his faecal matter were entering my body. I’m not the OCD type, nor even particularly hygiene conscious (nor indeed am I unhygienic- just normal I suppose) but this conclusion rattled me.

It takes illumination to see them, the motes.