The Word Dustsceawung 

This post might be a little sad for some, so please be cautious. If you start, I hope to see you through the end, you star dust you.

Dustsceawung (pronounced Dust-shai-wung) is an apparently an Old English word that describes a rather elusive and almost ineffable feeling, much like the French ‘L‘ appel Du Vide‘ (Call of the void) or the feeling of Sonder of all the lives around us, or anemoia and the longing for things forgotten.

Words are like boxed little packages that define discrete or specific meanings, and as we learn them, we recall specific emotions. It’s the poet that tries to capture these emotions and feelings in signs and symbols. To describe the transcendent and smokey meaning and bind it with these letters and sigils we read.

Dust-sceawung is about thinking how things turn into dust and come from dust. The affix/prefix ‘Dust-‘ being about dust, and suffix ‘-sceawung’ to meaning ‘to look at, inspection, examination; contemplation, consideration’. So Dustsceawung means ‘to contemplate and reflect on dust’.

The books, or colloquially called ‘Bible’ does make mention of the first man being made from dust;

Genesis 2:7 “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

In some Christian Burial rites, a Pastor may recite this following verse;

Genesis 3:19 “By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread, until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return”.

Often you might here the shortened version “From ashes to ashes, dust to dust”.

When you see lives rise up from vegetation or animals or humans or cities, and then you see in a long enough time they fade back into the dust. Cities and forests burn and scorched earth turning what once was into ashes. Things rise and fall, decomposed by fungi and bacteria to fertilize and reset and recycle the ebb and flow of existence.

Even our economic systems and social circles can be described as bubbles, things that come into existence and pop. Our own thought bubbles and egoic self identities, a temporal bubble of dimensionality that’s not confined to spatial dimensions. Where do the bubbles come from and where do they go? Bubble theory and cavitation or void/vacuum-idealogues needs more investigation in my estimations.

Our cities and monuments erected turn into megalithic remains, like the skeletal bones abandoned by an old ancient civilization, they get buried and worn under the brush of vines or crumble to dust. Ruined monuments turned into ruins to fade into obscurity and the sands of time, slowly eroded by the seconds as if each second is a water droplet of weathering erosion. -weathered by the sands of time.

“My empire of dirt” – Hurt by Johnny Cash

Even the vast bounty and beauty of mother nature, the mountains are not immune. The craggy flow of water that carves facial reconstructive surgery on mountains and moves dust ever so slowly, forming Grand Canyons and splitting mountains into valleys to deposit elsewhere. The figures and forms of even mountains rise and fall to dust.

“The poet says ‘The hills are shadows and they flow from form to form and nothing stands’,” – Alan Watts

As things fade in the sands of time, up in smoke, shadows that rise and fall to the light of it’s end.

It’s as if life and everything in it is a higher density light materialized for a short moment to shine in the universe before spending light years else where. A holographic universe of hyperreality we call the ‘real’ reality. A sort of homage to the illusion or ‘maya’ of smoke that is reality as the sacred tobacco or incense stick burns. As if reality is this dream that goes as easily as it came.

It’s common to think, the impermanence of existence. It almost has this longing call to shake you -and wake you -to the idea of existence being a finite thing. If we don’t live in the present moment, Here and Now, we might see life flash before us. Passing us by.

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it”
– Ferris Bueller – Dr Richard Chambers

Much like how the Buddhist monks may make beautiful mandalas with sand, only to let it fade into the breeze of existence as a testament to both non-attachment and beauty of life.

As if life is this grand play, with a beginning and end, where each actor has their entrance and exits.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.” – William Shakespeare

As if we’re doing a dance that is fun but ends, for nothing great lasts forever, and there’s beauty in knowing that the suffering too doesn’t last for. . . ever. I mean, if you were to dance having fun forever, you may eventually get tired and it’d become suffering. Yet the Daoist Yin and Yang do their cosmic dance;

Sometimes the end is a new beginning and it allows us to release, to de-attach, breathing out old air to breath in fresh air, the old life fades to make room for the new one. Some see it as a sacrifice, others as a blessing.

“this too shall pass” – said by countless people most lost to time

From one dance to the next, from one play to the next, from one life to the next.

You may experience a flurry of emotions thinking about your death or your existence and that may scale up as you get to contemplating the universe’s life. At times it can be maddening, at times it can be sweet, for others it’s ridiculous and a divine comedy, for others it’s a grand tragedy. Some see it as nihilistic, yet others see it as a way to embrace freedom, while others invent their own meaning. The emotions cycle through like the thoughts and feelings as we repeat the dance of the cosmos. Each emotion just as fleeting as the thoughts that grip and (try to) bind us, as if they’re rainbow stars twirling in and out of view.

The beautiful Samsara of life, the Dharmic wheel that rotates us in a merry-go-round of life.

As if life is this nice little cosmic music box we twirl and wind up to play, each note a unique sound to be heard for the first and last time. Each moment a unique one as each play of the music box is a unique instance, never ever played in the same universe, for the universe is no longer the same.

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
-Heraclitus

On Humble

The word humble comes from the Latin word humilis, which means “lowly, humble, or on the ground”.

The word humility, is about humilis, or being of the dirt. Dirt which is synonymous with dust.

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less,”-C.S. Lewis

It’s not thinking more of others or thinking lesser of yourself, but thinking about yourself less. Lowering the frequency of thoughts about your identity and role and pride and all the other egoic things. As you ought to do so in moderation to have healthy amounts of doubt to balance out willpower and self agency.

Perhaps that’s why we call ourselves ‘human’, homage to the humilis humility of man.

In the end I am but a man that will one day fade into obscurity and I am reminded of the sages reciting that ‘there is nothing new under the sun’, so this is short lived in it’s ephemeral feelings that are fleeting like the composition and re-arrangement of stardust in all things.

Like the story of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius having a slave follow and remind him that “You’re just a man.”

Memento mori in some sense, but I rather want to think of it as less about my death and more about my return to dust, the blood and bone-dust that I’ll return to. Perhaps that’s why famous painters sometimes painted skeletons smoking.

Here, a poem

A speck of sand in the desert,
A dust mote-
but not the desert itself.
The desert is in the speck,
but the desert is not just the speck.
The desert isn’t the only desert.

I am a wave in the ocean,
but not the ocean itself.
The ocean is in the wave,
but the ocean is not just the wave.
The wave isn’t the only wave.

“You are not a drop in the ocean.
You are the entire ocean in a drop”
-Rumi

A star in the cosmos, the galaxy.
A scintillating speck of light,
A light mote-
but not the galaxy itself.
The galaxy is in the star,
but the galaxy is not just the star.
The galaxy isn’t the only galaxy.

I am in the universe,
but not the universe itself.
The universe is in me,
but the universe is not just me.
My universe isn’t the only universe.

‘you are not a being in the universe,
you are the universe in a being’

Some songs

That evoke such a meaning of Dustschewung;

Hello World – Slushii & sapientdream
Dreams Wash Away – Joe Wong
Dust in the Wind – Kansas
Fade Into You – Mazzy Star
Don’t Let Life Pass You By – Brenna Larsen
If You Love Me – Brenda Lee
We All Become – Darren Korb

And some songs about re-cycle and cycling;

Purity Ring – Begin Again
Past Lives – Slushii and sapientdream
Merry-Go-Round of Life (from “Howl’s Moving Castle”)
One more time – Daft Punk

Epilogue

A word, Dustsceawung, that’s all it takes, to unpack and unbox so much meaning and thoughts, to feel all the feelings of immortality and mortality. I’m not here to make you feel any type of way, I just want you to enjoy the moments you have in the Here and Now as you might come across the contemplation of dust.

Remember;

“Be humble for you are made of earth. Be noble for you are made of stars.”
― Serbian Proverb

We’re – Just – Star – Dust

“. . . if you don’t know how the universe shines the stars, constellates the constellations, or galactifies the galaxies – you don’t know but that doesn’t mean that you aren’t doing it just the same way as you are breathing without knowing how you breathe.” – Alan Watts

And of course, some things transcend the cycle of life and death, some meanings are so transcendent that they leave a mark on the fabric of the universe in all dimensions. The concepts of the soul and gods are such ideas. Yet specifically the key moments that transcend the cycle, are like golden orbs that shine through all of existence and non-existence archived in the akashic records of all collective wisdoms and civilizations.

(Well, that’s if you believe in it, but you’ll have to find out for yourself if you believe in it or not).

Hence, why I try to make a note as to why I say the phrase. That words will have meaning at one point, even if there are no longer words, no longer meaning, or no longer things. As you may have guessed the phrase;

Words Mean Things