It was a dusty day yesterday. It looked as though gravity had failed and most of Blanco county was floating off into space. At first, I thought it might be a fire, but quickly realized it was just mother earth re-arranging things. And then my thoughts turned, as they almost always do in situations like that, to what sort of layer, if any, that dust might form when it falls back to earth, and the centuries pass, and things get compressed. Probably not much, I realized, just one day in a millennium of days.

It’s sort of humbling exercise and helps me realize that my time here is short and will probably be little noted by the universe, even if I should get lucky and have my footprints captured in mud and then turned into rock. After all, someone or something would eventually have to find them and then care about the discovery, and who knows what the odds are for that happening. Nope. It was a dusty day in a million dusty days, with more likely to come.

This is beginning to feel a little morose, and that’s not the goal. It’s just that thinking about dust and the universe and centuries to come helps me get oriented and feel happy I’m here watching all this stuff and thinking about it even if no one knows I’m thinking about it. Except a few people will read this and know but think how many people are outside that set. Lots. They’re going about their lives completely unaware I’m alive and thinking about the universe and writing it down. You can’t even say it’s their loss, because I have no idea what they’re thinking about, and that might be my loss.