DUST IN THE CORNER

NOVEMBER 22, 2025 – Over the seasons throughout the years I’ve noticed that our house operates as an intricate seasonal sundial.

In spring, for example, early morning sunlight peeks through the window panes of my wife’s office—forcing me off the east end of the sofa in the adjoining room, where I like to write at that time of day.

At that same time of the morning a few months later, when I prefer to sit on the back porch, reading, perhaps, instead of writing, the sun—now having shifted significantly upward and northward—beams its good cheer onto the glass tabletop at the other side of the porch from me. The tabletop then happily reflects the blinding sunbeams right into my face. Liking my seat and set-up and being a creature of habit, my only recourse is to wear a baseball cap with the bill pulled way down.

When autumn arrives and I’m back inside, the morning sun is out of my eyes, but just before noon, sunrays filter through the small panes in the window above our entry door. For a time, a row of bright squares highlights the grain of the maple door on our front hall closet.

Then comes winter, when lower-riding, faster-sinking sunlight passes through the southwest window of the living room, slips over the piano top, through the entryway and into the sitting room to play as it chooses through panes of the French door that’s permanently opened against the wall next to the entry into my wife’s office.

I’m amused by the relative power of the sun—a broiling mass of nuclear fusion in size and power beyond our psychological grasp (though well within the bounds of scientific knowledge)—vis-à-vis the “power” of the brick and mortar walls of an abode built by human hands. By every measure, of course, the sun is mightier than the walls, and yet . . . and yet . . . the wall has the strength to block the light of that mighty star.

But let’s not kid ourselves. In the playful match between sun and wall, the sun always finds an opening—a windowpane—that yields without resistance unless the curtains are drawn. Upon finding that opening, the sun instantaneously shines through and romps where it will in open mockery of the walls and their opacity.

Over time I’ve noticed that the sun’s favorite prank is to reveal dust in an isolated corner of one room or another; a square of the floor next to a floor lamp, for example; or under an armchair, where sunrays spotlight not only the dust but the beautiful grain of oaken floor.

I’m further amused by my notice of such banality as what I’ve here described. But is it so banal? On one level yes; on another, what’s going on here is monumental: cosmic forces registering on the retinas, then consciousness of a self-aware being, similar to billions of other members of my species on this tiny planet, each with a brain full of synapses that light up thoughts, perceptions, and wonderment, imagination, and curiosity.

In the fleeting spotlight of sunbeams through the window, the dust on the floor assumes enormous significance by the near magical power of human retinal and neurological processes. Where else in cosmic infinity—besides elsewhere on this orb of ours—does a self-aware being notice dust in the corner of a seasonal sundial crafted by other self-aware beings, each with two hands, each hand bearing fingers and an opposing thumb and attached to a hinged limb, together with two sets of feet, legs, hips, knees and ankles for ambulation?

I say, not banal at all, which phrase, to my further amusement, rhymes with my dad’s joking imitation of a Swedish immigrant in transition between the language of the old country and that of the new: “Some betala, and some don’t betala at alla.” (“betala” meaning “pay” in Swedish and “alla” meaning “all.”) In fact, all this blather and nonsense about dust on the floor, sun streaming through the windows, and applied string theory of thought evoke Descartes’ foundational philosophical insight: Cogito, ergo sum. Nothing banal about that!

Subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

© 2025 by Eric Nilsson