Culture

Sydney’s Dust Storm Was Kinda Beautiful, Mostly Terrifying

We have quite clearly angered the Gods.

by Joseph Earp  13 February 2019
The dust storm above Sydney was horrifying

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In 1854, philosopher Henry David Thoreau released Walden, one of the most important and beautiful books ever published in the English language. A chronicle of his time spent living alone by Walden pond in total harmony with nature, the book is a powerful treatise about the importance of respecting the natural world and the need for humanity to live within its means.

I love Walden, and I believe it has some important things to teach us. But I do have a slight counter to the central thrust of Thoreau’s argument, which I’d like you to consider: nature is extremely scary and would just as soon wipe you and everyone you love off the planet as it would allow you to feast on its bounty.

To that end, every now and then nature seeks to remind us that it could starve us to slow and painful death like the abusive master that it is.

That’s exactly what happened this morning when Sydneysiders woke up to see the sky was a terrifying, vengeful shade of red, thanks to a dust storm that has already shown its considerable might to the terrified residents of Canberra.

This isn’t the first time that Sydney has been besieged by hordes of red dust particles.

Back in 2009, Sydneysiders woke up to find that the city had been transformed into a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Ever since that, we’ve been excitedly awaiting another chance to be reminded that everything about us — our personalities, memories, loves and dreams — are electrical messages shooting around slabs of meat that could be destroyed by nature’s equivalent of a drowsy fart.

Now, finally, our wishes have come true.

It’s times like this that you realise how constantly fucking horrifying it must have been to live in an ancient civilisation like Rome or Greece.

Imagine stumbling out of your house after a long night of drinking wine strained outta goat piss or whatever, only to look up and see that the whole goddamn sky is on fire. You’d have no way of contextualising what you’re looking at; no way of explaining it away.

You’d have to quite quickly come to the conclusion that the very large, bearded, constantly horny man living in the sky was angry with you, wouldn’t you?

Anyway, till the next storm, folks!