The eternal grind: Human bodies reduced to dust

This chapter explores bodies that are decentralised and in a state of dusty disintegration. It addresses the horror of the body in a state of dissipation by asking: where and when does the body begin? Where may it end? And how might the body's transgressed boundaries offer up positive possibilities? Dust engenders a fear of the unseen, an anxiety and horror at the dissolution of matter to a minute scale; it is amorphous, all pervading, and knows no boundaries. Through the inevitable progress of time the body is transformed and reduced to dust as the outer layers are shed as dander. In its smallest form the body is grotesque and undelineated. Our dead return to dust but so too do the living. The skins and cells of our moving, breathing bodies disperse into the world, mingling with foreign matter and waste as we pass through space. Dust forms stagnant veils coating objects of disuse, gathering in corners and floating above our beds. It is an unsettling and permanent presence, marginal and transitional, without site or bounds.