Cleaning lady’s response to Werner Herzog

2012-04-24

The universe. Profound in its enormity. The detailed atomic structure of a particle in the depths of space, simultaneously illustrating both immeasurable breadth and infinite detail. And likewise we are specks, motes, purposeless fragments floating in our own, great beyond like those very flakes of skin and soil, buffeted by Brownian motion and attracted by still-unexplained laws of gravity and static onto your shelves and the inner surfaces of your electronic devices.

And yet even as we, these miniscule scattered, inconsequential shavings, mere powder filed from that universal grand design, even as we somehow avoid the inevitably grim consequences of our improbable existence, marking each cycle of our tiny planet round the sun as a notch on some celestial stick of achievement, we still strive for explanations, from fulfilled prophecies to punctuated equilibria. We share this common urge for meaning and yet we have different priorities, each of us loosely woven filaments in the threadbare carpet we call civilisation.

Speaking of carpet, you might want to try vacuuming yourself sometime. You might enjoy it.