STAYING STONE

Van Cleef-- The perfect stone . . .
Zales-- Everybody must get stone.
P. Wilson

Here’s another highly positive relationship we have with the mineral world, jewelry.

Once, on some sort of trip, prob mescaline, my roommate, Merry, brought out a box of jewelry. A few loose stones and a couple of simple settings.

She explained their provenance, mostly family, but at least one rich boyfriend, and their quality ratings, which were high. Mostly we just looked at them.

Instances of natural exquisiteness they were. But nothing more, at least in terms of delivering a spiritual message. I’d much rather own a Vermeer (of my choice) than the Hope Diamond.

As a medium of exchange, gems represent the highest concentration of value of any non-exotic material. They’re highly portable and easy to smuggle. Polonium, for instance, probably costs more per gram, but it’s a little hard to handle. Diamonds—no prob.

Remember when the Shah made his getaway—he had more gold than the plane could lift off with, dumbshit. An equal value of gems would have fit in a suitcase. Even cash gets bulky.

Since that experience with Merry I’ve enjoyed looking at jewelry in store windows and museums. It’s not like I have any strong desire to own it, least of all the elaborate settings.

I do admit that understated pearls, fine gold chains, and great solitary stones can be very flattering to the human body.

My last trip to New York was Christmas time so there were rubies in the windows of the stores on Fifth Avenue, giving a chance for easy comparison.

Tiffany – their rubies were too pale, pinkish
Bulgari – yucky orange stuff (when I see Bulgari, I think bulgur wheat)
Van Cleef & Arpels – deep red with intense candlepower

So I’m really easy to shop for, garden gnomes by Bufano, and rubies from Van Cleef.

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STONE AGAIN

In my previous post about Tahquitz (rhymes with pockets) Canyon, I extolled minerality—my brother the boulder, and all. Excellent post, I recommend it.

It occurred to me that some sculptures by San Francisco’s beloved Benny Bufano (wikilink), illustrate my point very well, per the three below photos.

I love Benny’s animals with their round curves and minimally formed features, like babies. They're cute and sympathetic. "Yeah," Pud agrees, "screw the critics."

Because so much of the surface is non-feature-filled, we are struck as much by their rock-ness as by their animal-ness. Classical sculpture asks us to forget we are viewing rock, and gives us the illusion of viewing, say, Apollo, or Aphrodite.



These Bufanos don’t try to hide the fact that they are rock. They are sort of halfway between a rock and the subject animal. Boulder, or animal? Both, just like us. At least just like me and Pud.

So I pictured Bufano taking a hunk of marble and doing the least possible removal to reveal the animal form.




But no. My crack fact checkers tell me these works are cast-marble, or other cast-stone. This totally bummed me. Cast stone (little link) is something I wish I didn’t have to know about.

Anyway, IF Bufano had carved these things from solid rock, they would have brilliantly illustrated my point. But, hey, I still love those cuddly critters.

My friend Michael did a Bufano related photo essay (highly recommended) in his pre-blog days.

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STONE

Pud gets annoyed when I refer to his “seventy-five acid trips.”

“Seventy-five is just a ballpark number,” he reminds me, “And it wasn’t all acid. There was lots of mescaline and psilocybin in there.”

“That stuff was so cheap! Two or three bucks a pop, for a twelve hour trip! And you couldn’t do it more than once or twice a week.

“Not everyone can afford to winter at Krishnamurti’s institute in Ojai. But even the groundskeepers there could afford a few square mms of windowpane on a Friday night.”

Pud and I agree that the ultimate insight to be obtained, either from years of meditation or from a few hours on LSD, is minerality.

We are taught there are three existences: animal, vegetable and mineral.

This is false.

It’s all mineral.

I refer to my own enlightenment on this topic as “my brother the streetcar.”

It was the day after an acid trip, and I had to take the streetcar downtown on some errand. The joint I smoked before leaving started my visual plane swirling again.

Swinging around a turn I realized that the molecules that made up the streetcar I was on and the molecules that made up me were completely identical as to global position and directionality. We bonded, the streetcar and I.

Life, whether animal or vegetable, is a particular, temporary configuration of molecules, all of which are mineral, which makes it so amazing.

When you see expert ballet dancers on stage doing a pas de deux, the choreography might be more or less aesthetically pleasing, but the awesomeness that underlies the event is that we are watching boulders that somehow got up and started moving around.

Sfmike sent some photos of our hike up Tahquitz (rhymes with "pockets") canyon. (See his post here.) In the photo below we see Palm-Springs-Tony in the foreground. (To say that Tony is sfmike’s better half grossly understates the math.) Of the boulders we see behind Tony, one has a special name. It’s “sfwillie.” Can you pick it out? (Hint: white cap.)

Death is the loss of the particular organization of minerals called “life.” And it's the loss of the illusion of non-minerality.

Our delectation of beautiful human bodies seems unexceptional. “From fairest creatures we desire increase…”

Less clear to me is why we delight in beautiful landscapes and vistas. Why, especially, do we ever enjoy looking at rocks? Why did I so enjoy the hike up Tahquitz Canyon?

I contend it’s a “my brother the boulder” thing. Just as we are drawn to another human body with becoming-oneness as a goal, so we are drawn to beautiful earth-forms.

In Tahquitz where the strata of sheered cliffs show the twists and groans of geologic time, I feel contained. My spirit, when I die, won’t go flying off into nowhere. It will be welcomed, as when lovers unite at the end of Act III, by the mineral world, and held tight and secure.

This all comforts me. I won’t be nothing when I die.

"Yeah," Pud says, "you'll be a goddamn rock!

Pud is often misunderstood. Sometimes you think he’s saying, “I’m stoned.”

What he’s actually saying is, “I’m stone.”

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