I haven’t been taking as many pictures the last few days, so AI art will have to do.
Patrick, a friend staying with us while his house gets back in order after the flooding, hauled up a goodly piece of quartz from the forest yesterday while I was away. He did it with his baby on his back. I can’t honestly recall the last time I felt so flush with pride.
It was a big piece of quartz, too.
His wife asked him what it was like to haul the stone, how did he feel? I talk so frequently about it that she was curious how he felt about the whole affair.
It was heavy.
Feels like a zen aphorism.
It is heavy, and the whole beauty of the thing is that it isn’t easily put to words.
Recently I have sensed an accumulation of many things which cannot be expressed by an objective form like the novel. Words are insufficient. So I have found another form of expression.
Yukio Mishima said that before he attempted a coup of the Japanese military and committed seppuku. While hauling rocks may get at a somewhat smaller thing than his glorious death, it is at least next door.
Mishima was obsessed with the harmony of pen and sword. Hauling rocks feels neighborly to such harmony. It is not a thing easily explained and that is why it is so arresting. I have had the thought of inviting students from my alma mater to make an encounter week (a tri-annual trip away from school) out of hauling rocks and writing about it and other nearby ideas. Because of that I am forcing myself to more completely communicate the virtue of the act. It should be done along with reading Mishima or Yanagi, and while writing and photographing oneself.