We turn over stones to look for something new, a chance to connect, affirm, explore. My mother and I always took heart shaped stones home from the beach. We had a whole collection of rocks, each of them selected for a special attribute. A glimmering stripe or a spray of quartz. We searched for smoothness, we avoided the jagged lumps that nowadays might catch my eye. We deemed flat thin rocks to be special, we called them pancakes and stacked them into towers that would make IHOP envious. Real pancakes weren’t common in my house, they were reserved for special days like the first day of school. My dad threw chunks of apple in the batter, I suppose to add nutrients. I would take giant bites of the warm fluffy discs, devastated that my stomach was too tied in knots to finish the plate.
Unlike apple pancakes, stone pancakes last forever. We kept growing our collection. My mother claimed we needed rocks to hold down the soil in her plants, but we had more than enough for the sake of utility. Holding a rock in my hand, I can feel a sense of the tides that have sculpted its form. I am holding a portion of eternity, or as close to eternity as I can really fathom. I am holding a mystery, its origins forever unknown.
Stones seem to like company. If you see one stone on the beach, there is bound to be another. Stones move in communities, they sit in great piles and rustle against one another when water flows through their gaps. When you pick up a rock, it holds the warmth from the sun. When you fling a rock into the ocean, you know it will make its way back to the shore.
Let’s say there is spirit coursing through all of us, swimming between every molecule in the form of vibrations between our atoms. If that’s true, then rocks are just as divine as you and me. Maybe more divine than we are. I know it’s foolish to try to weigh the presence of spirit, but perhaps their divinity is less diluted than ours. Without the ego, the mind, the whirring of thoughts that truncate the felt connection to our inherent spirit.
A rock is pure presence, non reactive, but solid in itself.
After we collected rocks on the beach, we’d rinse the sand off with the salty ocean. In the water, the stone becomes illuminated and alive. Dark green, orange, variegated textures, it all rises to the surface. A transformation that cannot be sustained. Even a rock is capable of surprises. Even a rock can exhibit change.
Today I long to feel a fresh wet rock in the center of my palm, a bite-sized weight of the earth.
After the winter storms, boyfriend and I wandered down to the ocean for a sunset. We didn’t know what to expect, maybe we would get there and it would be raining. But the sun was visible in the sky, shattering the clouds with red hues and purple shadows. It was low tide, the ocean cinched in to reveal a mirror of wet sand, scattered with bits of sea-tossed wood and large swirls of fine gravel. A palette of cacophony pushed down by the floods in Northern California. We found a pink shell resembling a wedding cake with something alive inside. We tossed it back into the ocean, hoping the waves would take it to a safer place. That day, I didn’t see a single noteworthy rock. I don’t remember seeing any rocks at all. I took home a little piece of wood, just bigger than the palm of my hand. Some days I reach for it just to remember the coastline. Some days I imagine it has a bit of magic.
When an object has survived the sea, it is bestowed with a certain power. It has done something that we cannot. The stones have watched millennia come and go. When a stone finally shrinks, it joins the infinite realm of sand, splitting into countless grains that can go anywhere. They travel on the wind, in our shoes, clinging to the condensation on the sides of our to-go cup.
If I was a grain of sand, I’d spend forever on the beach. Humans pay millions of dollars to live next to the ocean and see every sunset. If I was a grain of sand, I’d see it all for free.
xx
James
if you have thoughts on stones...
So encapsulating that for a moment I felt I was a traveling ocean stone. Grateful for your words 🫶🏽
beautifully contemplative☁️