| A New Life Has Begun!Life seems bored in this month. Study and work cycle without any resting moment. Dirt is evidence of the imperfections of life, a constant reminder of change and decay. It is the dark side of all human activities - human, because it is only in our judgements that things are dirty : there is no such material as absolute dirt. Earth, in the garden, is a valuable support and nourishment for plants, and gardeners often run it through their fingers lovingly : earth on the carpet is dirt. A pile of dung, to the dungbeetle, is food and shelter for a large family: a pile of dung to the Public Health Inspector, is a Nuisance. Soup in a plate, before we eat it, is food ; the traces that we leave on the plate imperceptibly become dirt. Lipstick on a girl's lips may make her boy-friend more anxious to touch them with his own lips; lipstick on a cup will probably make him refuse to touch it. Because of this relativity, because dirt can be almost anything that we choose to call dirt, it has often been defined as 'matter out of place'. This fits the 'earth(garden)/earth(carpet)' difference quite well, but it is not really very useful as a defination. A sock on the grand piano or a book in a pile of plates may be untidy, and they are certainly out of place, but they are not necessarily dirty. To be dirt, the material has to be hard to remove and unpleasant. If you sit on the beach, particularly if you bathe, sand will stick to you, but not many people would classify this as dirt, mainly because it brushes off so easily. However, if, as often happens the sand is covered with oil, tar, or sewege, and this sticks to you, it is definitely dirt. |
