Becoming a Stone Medium
If reincarnation truly exists, I hope that in my next life I will be a stone.
Perhaps I would be the pebble carried by a penguin during courtship, offered to the one it loves. I would not know how many years the seawater had washed over me, polishing me into something round, before I arrived before you as a small act of “pebbling”.
I would not feel that time had been long. Nor would I feel that meaning had to be profound. Meaning belongs to the one who gives it. A diamond and carbon are the same, and not the same. It is the act of proposal that gives the diamond its meaning. As a diamond, I would simply exist within time. Perhaps time would not even pass through me, as my existence would already be a witness to time itself.
How quiet that would be.
I could simply be a stone. I could rest on a cliff, by the roadside, inside a display cabinet, or in a jewellery box. All would be temporary, and I would not expect eternity. If someone found and carried me, I would go with them for that part of the journey. You could do whatever you wanted with me. To spend a lifetime saving the world is too difficult. To spend one life accompanying one person is enough, too.
I would remain within everything that happens, untouched by joy or grief. This would be different from my previous life. To be human is always to be implicated; even stones are filled with the energy given to them.
I do not dislike this involvement, even if I sometimes imagine becoming a stone. No one dislikes happiness. At least in this life, what I have been searching for is to love and to be loved. So I give, and I receive.
I often wonder how to live an ordinary life and feel that the world is worth staying in. It is too large a question, containing too many possible answers. The only one I can truly hold is my own.
I have pursued excellence, but every mountain has another mountain beyond it. I have wanted certainty, but even the promise that effort will be rewarded is already a kind of blessing. Fate does not always move according to human will. Sometimes things happen because they happen, and nothing more can be done.
The useful remedies are often ordinary. When I begin with love, the world becomes gentler, regardless of outcome. Love is a generous answer; there is always one form of it that can be carried.
Around me, people are always arriving, staying for a while, and leaving again; yet something of them remains in the way I see, touch, and remember. In the small world of Stow Building, I have watched others devote themselves to their work and to the things they love. We come from different places, but for this short time we share the same light, dust, exhaustion and hope. Then one day we scatter again. I find this deeply romantic.
Perhaps this is why I am drawn to stones. They do not stop departure, but they hold traces of contact. Some friends have sent me stones after learning that I love them. Some have sent food across the ocean when I was too tired to cook. Some simply said, “I saw this and thought of you.” These gestures are small, but they stay with me like pebbles placed quietly into a pocket.
So I return to stones again. They have never been empty things. They carry the energy I give them, and the energy others have given to me. Every stone in my studio reminds me that I have grown inside forms of care that are not always loud, but steady enough to be felt. To write directly about love is difficult. So I let the stones hold part of it.
My grandmother was the first person who taught me this kind of looking. She was a geologist, and I admired her deeply: for the life she devoted to the earth, and for the way she could hold my hand through a park or a hill, telling me the names and stories of small stones without ever making them feel small. After she passed away, some of the stones she had collected were sent to me. Looking at them, I felt that I could still see her. Then I realised it was not only those stones. I could see her in stones on the street, in stones I bought, in stones I received, and in any stone I chose to look at carefully enough. Because I wanted to see her, I could.
A friend once told me that one of my stone paintings felt full of energy. Perhaps he could see it because he loves me. Perhaps energy appears this way: through attention, affection, and the willingness to believe that something has been placed into the work. When I cut, grind, break, polish, layer and arrange stones, I am not only producing an image. I am staying with what has been given to me. Each fragment holds pressure. Each surface carries touch. Each layer gathers time.
I hope the energy I place into the work can be released again. Is it love? Perhaps. Or it is whatever the viewer is ready to sense.
In this life, I am becoming a stone medium.
