JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Some of the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum. Greece wants them returned.

What is dust? Where does it come from? I clean the house every other day (used to clean daily, but it was taking up my mornings), and the dust is inexhaustible and self-replenishing. The other day I looked up dust online and learned that it’s composed of soil and other fine particles like pollution and bits of concrete hanging in the air or blown by the wind, pollen, textile and paper fibers, human and animal hair, and human skin cells.

In short, everything sheds—people, animals, plants, buildings, streets, books, clothes—tiny bits of ourselves constantly getting sloughed off and settling on every surface. From the contents of the dustpan, it appears that my cats and I shed a pound of hair and skin cells everyday. We’re disintegrating, like the 50 percent who vanished after Thanos snapped, but in very, very slow motion. We’ll never be rid of dust. (Vacuum cleaners are not as thorough as a wet rag.)

Note to self: Do not use this as an excuse not to clean the house. Think of it as a heroic struggle in the face of futility, the domestic version of Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus.

Speaking of things left behind, in the magazine of The Economist there is an article about ghosts in the British Museum. The Economist is full of horror stories, unfortunately true, about the global economy, so a piece on actual ghosts is not surprising. Strange noises in empty rooms, heavy doors opening by themselves, orbs of light trailing the guards seen on CCTV.

Of course museums are haunted. They’re full of dead people’s things, and often the dead people themselves (mummies, skeletons). There’s so much emotion invested in those artifacts: looted treasures, defiled graves, desecrated temples, centuries of being charged with anger, fear, hatred and sadness. What if emotions can affect objects? What if the energies of the once-living linger? Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. If their dust stays long after they’re gone, why shouldn’t their rage?

It doesn’t even have to be supernatural, just external manifestations of people’s fears and anxieties. If a guard fears ghosts, she will see them in every shadow, movement, and trick of the light. I like the time glitch explanation: there’s a brief irregularity in your perception of time, so you have a vision of the past. To the people in the past, you’re a ghost from the future. Ghosts are not proof of the afterlife, or why would they be sticking around? I’ll acknowledge the possibility of ghosts, it’s the extreme measures people take to protect themselves from ghosts that strikes me as soft-headed. Fear will kill you more surely than any incorporeal being.

I sent the 1843 article to our chat group, which prompted a friend to report on some weirdness in his apartment. On a few occasions, he was on a video call with his partner, and his partner reports that the screen would grow dark until he was barely visible. And an orb of light would appear behind him.

I asked my friend if anything was troubling him—anything else, since we’re all under the kind of stress that can trigger hidden mutant powers. He said he’d heard rumors that a sex worker had been killed by a client in his building. I did a quick online search and found no news reports of the crime.

What if the dead person is demanding justice? What if fear and rage survive the death of the physical body?