I have been taking a course on the artist as exegete, and we have been working on the Cain and Abel story. After rereading the midrashim and seeing the discussions and distortions of the act in Jewish and Christian depictions, I came back to a request I got last week for some help in basic graphics from my cousin combining the two phrases:
The world was created for me
-Sanhedrin 4, 5
I am dust and ash
-Bereishit 18, 27
As usual, I began to play more than he needed me to, and ended up with some new art for myself.
This story of the origin of murder, and in fact the first human death seems to me to be inextricably linked to the contradiction in these paths. Although in combination these verses reflect the spectrum of the way one needs to live one's life, these two separate attitudes also reflect to me, the hubris necessary to take a life, combined with the utter sense of loss to the individual and the destruction to the world that results from such an act.
In Hebrew I call it: The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me, in English: The birth of murder.