Here is a translation of utterances made by a boulder resting in the bottom of Havasu Canyon, Arizona, not far from Havasu Falls:
You look at me now. Look at you. I know what you're thinking. It makes no difference whether you write this down or not. No difference to me. Well, that's not quite true. It's just that I've been hurt before. Though the passive voice is misleading. The wound turned out to be self-inflicted. I'll spare you that story. For now. I know how to ease into a conversation.
I broke loose and toppled from the headwall of sandstone above. It must have been 3,500 years ago or so, as you count the laps Earth makes around the sun. How little you human beings understand of time – inured as you are to the rounds of day and night that so occupy the making of a life.
Listen, I can show you time: my disparate, constituent particles blowing around forever and a day, or so it seemed at the time, amidst an ocean of dunes. My gradual subsidence, spanning millennia, beneath a shallow sea. My slow burial beneath thousands of feet of sand and clay. My rise into wind and weather over the course of millions of years. Eons of deep time, passing mostly in silence, with no apparent movement whatsoever. And then, deja vu: the earth shook. Suddenly, borne away from the stone strata where I'd been hidden from myself for so long, I fell thousands of feet and came to rest where you see me now: here, now, the solitary stone you find before you. I could show you more, but I don't want to bore you. Not that I think I have. It's just that a lot of people don't seem to notice. As if they think I'm dumb.
What, you think there's a law that says a boulder can't have a sense of humor? Or any creature feeling? You, standing there, in alarming contrast to the land around you, with your bright colors, your notebook and pen, acting as if you've never been and are not now hidden from yourself, trying not to miss or misconstrue what I’m saying, acting as if the words of a stone might carry some sort of gravitas. More likely they carry evidence of your lunacy. At least you get some credit, among those of your kind with a romantic bent, for listening to the moon. But surely you know what people will say when you try to pass this off as words you got from a stone, don't you?
If they only knew. And if they did, would it make any difference? What are they making of their biblical allotment of three score and ten, anyway? You can smell the burning and the blood from here.
And, more to the point, what are you making of yours? These are not rhetorical questions. It's ok, take your time. You have all the life remaining to you to ponder answers. Which only lead to more questions. On and on it goes. With hours that number so few, compared to mine, do you ever for an instant take your life for granted? Nothing personal, but it's not much, your life. I know, it's all you got. You could do worse. And surely will, some day. Not meaning to be harsh. I may be a stone, but I'm not devoid of irony. Or of art or empathy, for that matter, which, to my way of thinking, are all one and the same.
Pardon the redundancy, but this bears emphasis: I've been hurt. And the irony of the passive voice is that it veils the fact that I was more than an accomplice: I was principal agent. Though it's true I wasn't acting alone. Just unconscious of the fact. From the wound, I brought forth the conscious will to change what is, as if I could undo what had already been done, and with that, the will to cry out, to speak from the IS in me to the IS of the invisible realms, to be heard and understood. Perhaps that's the closest a boulder can get to time on a human scale. That's where you come in. A voice seeks an audience. It seeks to enter into conversation.
I understand why you would project the logic of your own small making onto the world at large, then endow that projection with sovereignty over all else, including yourself. It's a sort of spell you cast in the vain hope of avoiding pain, a spell that works only as long as you believe it will. But that belief, as infinitesimal and evanescent as the life given to you, cannot outlast the pain. Of course it takes more than the words of a boulder to break the spell. That's up to you, entirely. But I got news: you don't have to wait till you're dead, though death's a sure-fire way. Do you understand now what’s at stake? No time to lose. I say this not to make you cry but as your friend.
I nearly forgot who I was talking to, and a rock forgets nothing. That I know of. Somehow along the way you must have learned to take others’ lives lightly, while conceiving of your own flesh, nerves, blood, and bones as substantial and inviolate, a solid-seeming wager against impermanence and loss. Let me tell you, that's a wager you're sure to lose. Not to lay it on thick with the cliches. I do what I have to, to get my point across. Circumstances being what they are. Less than ideal, if you don't mind my saying so . . .
You look at me now. Look at you. I know what you're thinking. It makes no difference whether you write this down or not. No difference to me. Well, that's not quite true. It's just that I've been hurt before. Though the passive voice is misleading. The wound turned out to be self-inflicted. I'll spare you that story. For now. I know how to ease into a conversation.
I broke loose and toppled from the headwall of sandstone above. It must have been 3,500 years ago or so, as you count the laps Earth makes around the sun. How little you human beings understand of time – inured as you are to the rounds of day and night that so occupy the making of a life.
Listen, I can show you time: my disparate, constituent particles blowing around forever and a day, or so it seemed at the time, amidst an ocean of dunes. My gradual subsidence, spanning millennia, beneath a shallow sea. My slow burial beneath thousands of feet of sand and clay. My rise into wind and weather over the course of millions of years. Eons of deep time, passing mostly in silence, with no apparent movement whatsoever. And then, deja vu: the earth shook. Suddenly, borne away from the stone strata where I'd been hidden from myself for so long, I fell thousands of feet and came to rest where you see me now: here, now, the solitary stone you find before you. I could show you more, but I don't want to bore you. Not that I think I have. It's just that a lot of people don't seem to notice. As if they think I'm dumb.
What, you think there's a law that says a boulder can't have a sense of humor? Or any creature feeling? You, standing there, in alarming contrast to the land around you, with your bright colors, your notebook and pen, acting as if you've never been and are not now hidden from yourself, trying not to miss or misconstrue what I’m saying, acting as if the words of a stone might carry some sort of gravitas. More likely they carry evidence of your lunacy. At least you get some credit, among those of your kind with a romantic bent, for listening to the moon. But surely you know what people will say when you try to pass this off as words you got from a stone, don't you?
If they only knew. And if they did, would it make any difference? What are they making of their biblical allotment of three score and ten, anyway? You can smell the burning and the blood from here.
And, more to the point, what are you making of yours? These are not rhetorical questions. It's ok, take your time. You have all the life remaining to you to ponder answers. Which only lead to more questions. On and on it goes. With hours that number so few, compared to mine, do you ever for an instant take your life for granted? Nothing personal, but it's not much, your life. I know, it's all you got. You could do worse. And surely will, some day. Not meaning to be harsh. I may be a stone, but I'm not devoid of irony. Or of art or empathy, for that matter, which, to my way of thinking, are all one and the same.
Pardon the redundancy, but this bears emphasis: I've been hurt. And the irony of the passive voice is that it veils the fact that I was more than an accomplice: I was principal agent. Though it's true I wasn't acting alone. Just unconscious of the fact. From the wound, I brought forth the conscious will to change what is, as if I could undo what had already been done, and with that, the will to cry out, to speak from the IS in me to the IS of the invisible realms, to be heard and understood. Perhaps that's the closest a boulder can get to time on a human scale. That's where you come in. A voice seeks an audience. It seeks to enter into conversation.
I understand why you would project the logic of your own small making onto the world at large, then endow that projection with sovereignty over all else, including yourself. It's a sort of spell you cast in the vain hope of avoiding pain, a spell that works only as long as you believe it will. But that belief, as infinitesimal and evanescent as the life given to you, cannot outlast the pain. Of course it takes more than the words of a boulder to break the spell. That's up to you, entirely. But I got news: you don't have to wait till you're dead, though death's a sure-fire way. Do you understand now what’s at stake? No time to lose. I say this not to make you cry but as your friend.
I nearly forgot who I was talking to, and a rock forgets nothing. That I know of. Somehow along the way you must have learned to take others’ lives lightly, while conceiving of your own flesh, nerves, blood, and bones as substantial and inviolate, a solid-seeming wager against impermanence and loss. Let me tell you, that's a wager you're sure to lose. Not to lay it on thick with the cliches. I do what I have to, to get my point across. Circumstances being what they are. Less than ideal, if you don't mind my saying so . . .
2 comments:
Are you the Creighton King of the 1983 Teton speed ascent dual with Bryce Thatcher? If so I would like you talk to you about those runs. kessler.0@gmail.com
blog up mo' foo
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