<this is the first assignment I wrote for the Paul Kingsnorth - "Rewild Your Words" online course we took in December which is how our Poetry/Writing Sunday Salon got started. I'm CC:ing the other participants so they can see by example how to post their own work to this blog via e-mail>
On my property there are many river-stones that were almost surely
brought here by previous humans. I could have closed my eyes, my ears,
my nose and groped around until I found them, channeling Helen Keller
perhaps... but I did not... I sought out a particularly apt stone for
this purpose, with my eyes and my memory. I have hefted these stones
before and even know what they smell and taste like. I passed over
the pile brought in for the purpose of facing a wall, each about
fist-sized... not too large to throw effectively but too large for a
sling or slingshot. I avoided the ones marking the good-dogs grave
near the entrance to the property.
The stone I choose required two hands to lift and hold, so I engage both
left and right hands as well as brain-lobes in the effort/experience.
In fact, the stone is not much larger than my brain, or at least my
head. We are in the dead of winter, so the stone's temperature was
still below the ambient air-temperature, in spite of having been in the
sun for a few hours, it was also coupled to the frozen ground before I
lift it out of it's depression. Not only is it cooler than the air,
the mass of the stone and it's ability to release the heat conductively
into my hands makes it feel even colder. It is almost but not quite
painful to hold... I hold it against my chest and feel it suck my body
heat through my light clothing. I find a seat and rest it on my thighs
so I can shift my tactile awareness from it's weight and it's coolth to
its other properties.
With my eyes closed, I still have a residual image or visual-knowledge
of its profile, its color, its texture. My fingers and palms trace
it's surface, it's shape, the dirt still clinging to it as I contemplate
where the stone ends and the dirt begins... feeling the extra coolth of
the bottom where the stone holds moisture from the ground. If not the
soil, is the moisture itself in the stone part of the stone? I try to
to not-smell and not-hear the stone which makes those senses yet more
acute, at least for a moment. I have to smell the earth it came from
and hear the sound of the ridges and whorls of my fingers and palms
sliding over it's rough surface before I can discount or ignore them and
focus only on what I "feel".
The weight on my thighs is most potent, using a modern physics model to
think about how the stone is being pulled toward every other mass
particle of the earth and vice-versa... and for an instant I feel the
earth itself pushing my feet, calves, thighs up *into* the stone rather
than vice-versa. The stone is so very clearly part of the earth
itself, each seeking the other through gravitational affinity and I
cannot but be aware that my own body follows the same rules, the same
laws. I use my hands to shift the weight of the stone and am reminded
that it's mass is not just the weight of gravity, but it's reluctance to
move in any direction I might shove it... being reminded of the Scottish
game of "curling" now so spectacular in winter Olympic games... large
oblate spheroid stones shoved across ice with the "players" sweeping the
ice and snow and even the air in front of the sliding stone to speed it
along, slow it down, change it's direction... almost pure inertia with
the tiniest bits of friction and air resistance.
I feel the shape of the stone with my thighs, with my hands and
contemplate how this and so many others have three axes... longer in one
dimension, then narrower in the other, and finally narrowest in what we
think of as the flat-direction... the way it normally lies. I
contemplate how any solid body being pulled along by water over others
of its own kind will naturally find a major, a semi-major, and a minor
axis through positive feedback... the flat gets flatter. Even
driftwood in small enough pieces takes on these shapes. I flash to a
memory of holding the much less massive, the much less cold-holding, the
much less hard, and less smooth bits of ocean driftwood carried back
overseas from New Zealand and overland from the Pacific Northwest.
This reflection on gross shape allows, maybe requires me to notice the
more subtle bits of shape, the bulbous asymmetries, even one "vein"
cutting roughly through a diagonal across the oblate outlines in each
dimension. I let the tips of my fingers glide along the vein, feeling
the shift in texture, the greater coolth held by the humidity from being
closer to the center, by being more protected from the air and the sun.
Once I feel I've explored the tactile nature of the stone, I stand up,
eyes still closed and turn it over in my hands off-axes, to regather a
new perspective on it's gross shape, it's mass and unnoticed surface
textures. I feel the coolth in a new way, wondering if the heat of my
body had even begun to seep into it, certainly I felt the heat leaving
my body... my thighs still holding the physical but also heat-signature
impression of the stone. I lift it up to my face and breathe it's
petrochor scent into my nostrils, through my mouth so the molecules
settle on the chemical sensors in my nose, on my tongue, my palate. I
lay the flat of my tongue on the stone to taste it and feel the coolth
drawing heat from my tongue, the texture of the surface over my
tastebuds, the residual of miniscule bits of soil which I wonder whether
they were once part of this stone or entirely foreign.
Finally, I lift the stone high above my head, as if it were being
offered as a gift to the sun, feeling it's shadow on my face before I
open my eyes to it, seeing the coronal flare of the sun behind it,
before I gently lower it to the ground in a new resting place, knowing
it will settle into the soil and make a cradle for itself not unlike yet
entirely different from the cradle I lifted it from just a few minutes
before. In this act i am reminded of how old the stone is, both in
it's substance and in it's current shape. It will likely be
indetectibly different in shape at the end of my own lifetime, probably
even at the end of the lifetime of the humans species, even if we don't
rush ourselves out the door with self-destruction, post-human
transformation, or fleeing this planet which we may be rendering
uninhabitable to humans if not all life as we know it? I am left
wondering what this stone knows, what it's consciousness is like...
almost surely whatever awareness it has occurs at a time-scale related
to it's lifespan of hundreds of thousands or even millions of years.
I love it! What cairns do when we are not looking!
I like your stoney meditation.
here's a hint of what the rocks might know
r.
<this is the first assignment I wrote for the Paul Kingsnorth - "Rewild Your Words" online course we took in December which is how our Poetry/Writing Sunday Salon got started. I'm CC:ing the other participants so they can see by example how to post their own work to this blog via e-mail> On my property there are many river-stones that were almost surely brought here by previous humans. I could have closed my eyes, my ears, my nose and groped around until I found them, channeling Helen Keller perhaps... but I did not... I sought out a particularly apt stone for this purpose, with my eyes and my memory. I have hefted these stones before and even know what they smell and taste like. I passed over the pile brought in for the purpose of facing a wall, each about fist-sized... not too large to throw effectively but too large for a sling or slingshot. I avoided the ones marking the good-dogs grave near the entrance to the property. The stone I choose required two hands to lift and hold, so I engage both left and right hands as well as brain-lobes in the effort/experience. In fact, the stone is not much larger than my brain, or at least my head. We are in the dead of winter, so the stone's temperature was still below the ambient air-temperature, in spite of having been in the sun for a few hours, it was also coupled to the frozen ground before I lift it out of it's depression. Not only is it cooler than the air, the mass of the stone and it's ability to release the heat conductively into my hands makes it feel even colder. It is almost but not quite painful to hold... I hold it against my chest and feel it suck my body heat through my light clothing. I find a seat and rest it on my thighs so I can shift my tactile awareness from it's weight and it's coolth to its other properties. With my eyes closed, I still have a residual image or visual-knowledge of its profile, its color, its texture. My fingers and palms trace it's surface, it's shape, the dirt still clinging to it as I contemplate where the stone ends and the dirt begins... feeling the extra coolth of the bottom where the stone holds moisture from the ground. If not the soil, is the moisture itself in the stone part of the stone? I try to to not-smell and not-hear the stone which makes those senses yet more acute, at least for a moment. I have to smell the earth it came from and hear the sound of the ridges and whorls of my fingers and palms sliding over it's rough surface before I can discount or ignore them and focus only on what I "feel". The weight on my thighs is most potent, using a modern physics model to think about how the stone is being pulled toward every other mass particle of the earth and vice-versa... and for an instant I feel the earth itself pushing my feet, calves, thighs up *into* the stone rather than vice-versa. The stone is so very clearly part of the earth itself, each seeking the other through gravitational affinity and I cannot but be aware that my own body follows the same rules, the same laws. I use my hands to shift the weight of the stone and am reminded that it's mass is not just the weight of gravity, but it's reluctance to move in any direction I might shove it... being reminded of the Scottish game of "curling" now so spectacular in winter Olympic games... large oblate spheroid stones shoved across ice with the "players" sweeping the ice and snow and even the air in front of the sliding stone to speed it along, slow it down, change it's direction... almost pure inertia with the tiniest bits of friction and air resistance. I feel the shape of the stone with my thighs, with my hands and contemplate how this and so many others have three axes... longer in one dimension, then narrower in the other, and finally narrowest in what we think of as the flat-direction... the way it normally lies. I contemplate how any solid body being pulled along by water over others of its own kind will naturally find a major, a semi-major, and a minor axis through positive feedback... the flat gets flatter. Even driftwood in small enough pieces takes on these shapes. I flash to a memory of holding the much less massive, the much less cold-holding, the much less hard, and less smooth bits of ocean driftwood carried back overseas from New Zealand and overland from the Pacific Northwest. This reflection on gross shape allows, maybe requires me to notice the more subtle bits of shape, the bulbous asymmetries, even one "vein" cutting roughly through a diagonal across the oblate outlines in each dimension. I let the tips of my fingers glide along the vein, feeling the shift in texture, the greater coolth held by the humidity from being closer to the center, by being more protected from the air and the sun. Once I feel I've explored the tactile nature of the stone, I stand up, eyes still closed and turn it over in my hands off-axes, to regather a new perspective on it's gross shape, it's mass and unnoticed surface textures. I feel the coolth in a new way, wondering if the heat of my body had even begun to seep into it, certainly I felt the heat leaving my body... my thighs still holding the physical but also heat-signature impression of the stone. I lift it up to my face and breathe it's petrochor scent into my nostrils, through my mouth so the molecules settle on the chemical sensors in my nose, on my tongue, my palate. I lay the flat of my tongue on the stone to taste it and feel the coolth drawing heat from my tongue, the texture of the surface over my tastebuds, the residual of miniscule bits of soil which I wonder whether they were once part of this stone or entirely foreign. Finally, I lift the stone high above my head, as if it were being offered as a gift to the sun, feeling it's shadow on my face before I open my eyes to it, seeing the coronal flare of the sun behind it, before I gently lower it to the ground in a new resting place, knowing it will settle into the soil and make a cradle for itself not unlike yet entirely different from the cradle I lifted it from just a few minutes before. In this act i am reminded of how old the stone is, both in it's substance and in it's current shape. It will likely be indetectibly different in shape at the end of my own lifetime, probably even at the end of the lifetime of the humans species, even if we don't rush ourselves out the door with self-destruction, post-human transformation, or fleeing this planet which we may be rendering uninhabitable to humans if not all life as we know it? I am left wondering what this stone knows, what it's consciousness is like... almost surely whatever awareness it has occurs at a time-scale related to it's lifespan of hundreds of thousands or even millions of years.
--
Richard Krasin
505-670-5422
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