“So Be It! See To It!” (But Don’t Forget To Ask the Dust) by John A. A. Logan
"The other one he loved like a slave, like a madman and like a beggar. Why? Ask the dust on the road and the falling leaves, ask the mysterious God of life; for no one knows such things. She gave him nothing, no nothing did she give him and yet he thanked her. She said: Give me your peace and your reason! And he was only sorry she did not ask for his life." That’s Lt. Glahn speaking, in Knut Hamsun’s 1894 novel, Pan. Later, John Fante would take one of the phrases there for the title of his 1939 novel, Ask the Dust: The dust, of course, is unlikely to render many answers, and yet it has been a preoccupation of literature since its beginning… “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…” Book of Common Prayer “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,...