Celeste Olalquiaga:
   Dust is what connects the dreams of yesteryear with the touch of nowadays. It is the aftermath of the collapse of illusions, a powdery cloud that rises abruptly and then begins falling on things, gently covering their bright, polished surfaces. Dust is like a soft carpet of snow that gradually coats the city, quieting its noise until we feel like we are inside a snow globe, the urban exterior transmuted into a magical interior where all time is suspended and space contained. Dust makes the outside inside by calling attention to the surface of things, a surface formerly deemed untouchable or simply ignored as a conduit to what was considered real: that essence which supposedly lies inside people and things, waiting to be discovered. Dust turns things inside out by exposing their bodies as more than mere shells or carriers, for only after dust settles on an object do we begin to long for its lost splendor, realizing how much of this forgotten object's beauty lay in the more external, concrete aspect of its existence, rather than in its hidden, attributed meaning.
    Dust brings a little of the world into the enclosed quarters of objects. Belonging to the outside, the exterior, the street, dust constantly creeps into the sacred arena of private spaces as a reminder that there are no impermeable boundaries between life and death. It is a transparent veil that seduces with the promise of what lies behind it, which is never as good as the titillating offer. Dust makes palpable the elusive passing of time, the infinite pulverized particles that constitute its volatile matter catching their prey in a surprise embrace whose clingy hands, like an invisible net, leave no other mark than a delicate sheen of faint glitter. As it sticks to our fingertips, dust propels a vague state of retrospection, carrying us on its supple wings. A messenger of death, dust is the signature of lost time. 

Alan Wachtel: 
Bear with me while I set this up by briefly reviewing fractal theory. Most of the exposition comes from Complexification, by John L. Casti, and The Beauty of Fractals, by H.-O. Peitgen and P. H. Richter. 
     Consider the sequence of complex numbers z(i + 1) = z(i)**2 + c, n = 0, 1, 2, . . ., c = constant. In general, z can either converge to a fixed point, diverge to infinity, or execute some more or less complicated bounded trajectory around an attractor. The set of c for which the sequence beginning at z(0) = 0 does not diverge to infinity is the Mandelbrot set M. M is connected, but its boundary in the complex plane is fractal; values of c in various lobes of M correspond to particular kinds of trajectories. The interior of M is conventionally shown in black, and values of c outside M are colored to indicate how rapidly the corresponding sequences escape to infinity. 
     Now, instead of fixing z(0) and letting c vary, fix c and let z(0) vary. If c is in M, then, by definition, the sequence beginning at z(0) = 0 does not diverge. Sequences that begin in a certain region around 0 likewise do not diverge. This region is called the Julia set of c, and its complement is called the Fatou set. The Julia set, in general, is multi-lobed, and its boundary is fractal and self-similar.
     If c lies outside M, however, the sequence beginning at 0 diverges, and sequences beginning at most other complex values also diverge. The Julia set, which contains the exceptions, then dissolves into a Cantor set, or, with further variation of c, into a cloud of uncountably many disconnected points called Fatou dust. 
     "Dust," then, seems to be a technical term meaning a bounded set of uncountably many disconnected points. Further examples are given by the two-dimensional analogues of the triadic Cantor set, known in the triangular case as the Sierpinski gasket and in the square one as the Sierpinski carpet. (I think it's especially fitting for a carpet to be composed of dust. I've had a few like that.) 

See:
At Home with the Glynns: For quite a while during the writing of the book, I thought that I would call it War (Life, Love, Dust) and Peas

A Topical Guide to the Complete Peter Leroy (so far) is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, dialogues, settings, and businesses portrayed in it are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. 

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Portions of A Topical Guide to the Complete Peter Leroy (so far) were first published by Voyager, Inc., as part of The Complete Peter Leroy (so far).

The illustration at the top of the page is an adaptation of an illustration by Stewart Rouse that first appeared on the cover of the August 1931 issue of Modern Mechanics and Inventions. The boy at the controls of the aerocycle doesn’t particularly resemble Peter Leroy—except, perhaps, for the smile.