The Profits of Dust-Sifting.

[peter]

In this strange 'goose-weather' where even the snow and black fringed clouds seem like old theatrical properties, dead players cast-off rags, 'the complexion of a murder in a band-box, consisting of a large peice of burnt cork and a coal-black peruke', when the wind is so cold it seems like an empty theatre's 'sea, consisting of a dozen large waves, the tenth a little bigger than ordinary and a little damaged', I thought of those medicines that were advised for Meloncholy in the Anatomy of that disease, of mummies made medicine and of the profits of Dust-sifting.

So begins the wonderful book 'English Eccentrics' by (the not un-eccentric herself) Edith Sitwell. Without a doubt my favorite book opening ever (though there was another one about a grey gaunt man walking down the street and a woman snatching her kid out from in front of him), but in truth I've always struggled a little with it. What are the 'profits of dust-sifting other than just the bennefits of going through old stuff to see what trasures you can find. Is Dust-sifting an activity that I never heard of or did Sitwell just make up the term. Egyptian mummies I know were made into medicine and clearly the book 'The Anatomy of Melancholia' is being refered to. I think the pasage is saying that on certain grey days where depression threatens, there is 'medicine' of a spiritual kind to be found in casting ones mind back over the things of the forgotten past ie dust-sifting through the ancient 'mummies' of yester-year and taking solace from their strangeness and beauty.

Any other observations Guys. Do you have favorite passages of your own to share. I'd love to hear them.

Here's a last peice I love from Oscar Wilde's 'Decay od Lying'.

Who he was who first, without ever having gone out to the rude chase, told the wadering caveman at sunset how he had trailed the Megatherium to the purple darkness of it's jasper cave or had slain the Mammoth in single combat returning with it's gilded tusks, we shall never know, but surely that man was the father of all social intercourse.

(done from memory so it may be a little adrift in places - but God I love that; every bit paints a picture!)

[stonemaybe]

I wish i could find the Tom Robbins' passage about the bed bugs being voyeurs - my favourite page-and-a-half ever!

[Avatar]

There's a thread or two somewhere about best paragraphs or best openings or something.

--A

[peter]

Going through old threads might qualify as 'Dust-sifting' (if I knew what it was that is )