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A cold wind cuts through my flimsy Uniqlo jacket, making me shiver during the satellite pass. Only three hours earlier, I'd been sat on our balcony in shorts and a cut-off tee-shirt, reading Lucy Sabin and Jorge Olcina Cantos' article 'Weathering Saharan dust beyond the Spanish Mediterranean Basin: An interdisciplinary dialogue'. In it, they paraphrase Michael Marder writing that "to face dust is to face not the Other, but the self" (Marder, 2016: 6) Taken out of context, for me, there is something liberating in the idea that we can change state, transmutate, to the extent that we are unrecognisablle, even to ourselves. Back in inside the flat, a change in the soundscape of the street alerts to the rain. Perhaps a interin "cold drop" or the end of the dust weather. N and I take the opportunity to return to the balcony in raincoats and, under the cover of darkness, throw fists fulls of flower seeds into the empty lot next door. Last year, when the old building that had to occupied the lot was being torn down, angry, I had bought online two litres of wildflower seeds. Now we were completing the plan. The seeds rained down, hopefully accomopanied by nutrient rich Saharan Dust.

Date

1 April 2024 19:19:06

Location

Ferienhaus Post Sozial, Wien

Country or Territory

Austria

Name

Soph Dyer

Satellite

NOAA-15

Radio Callsign

M6NYX

Latitute / Longitude

48.225, 16.33