ART
My Rocks
I have in my possession, as I suspect you do, a collection
of rocks I’ve acquired in my travels around the world.
I have iron ore from Iron Mountain, sand from Saudi Arabia, lava from Hawaii, and a piece of granite I found on a walk in the park next door.
What possesses us to collect rocks? And how do we select them?
When my wife goes on vacation, she collects brochures and returns home to participate in what Newsweek Magazine calls “America’s fastest-growing hobby” – scrapbooking. She creates pages out of memories, mixing them with our family photos into a visual chronology of our trip so we can, in the future, look back on them with fondness. From all that I’ve seen and read about scrapbooking, it’s a girl thing.
Collecting rocks is a boy thing. Since boys were boys, they have gone finding and stuffing into their pockets these interesting, but unexplainable, objects of wonder. At least half of what boys collect are thrown away as soon as their pants hit the laundry. But that doesn’t faze us. In fact, not having to remember what we found the day before only encourages us to find more.
I mentioned this strange collection of mine to my friend Tom and he said, “Hey, I have a rock collection too. But I call them pebbles. And I keep them on the mantle of my fireplace.” Obviously, we men are indiscriminate in the rocks we collect. We collect too many from each site we visit and rarely take the time to remember, or edit, what we found. We leave that to the laundress.
Choosing a good rock is easy. In all the many manifestations of this earth, there are millions of options. But every rock has its own shape, consistency and size. And when we look at it, it speaks to us. It says, “Pick me up. Put me in your pocket.”
Choosing the right rock is harder. After the vacation is over, as you pack to leave, you are faced with a dozen or so miscellaneous interesting objects. Which to save as a memory of this marvelous adventure? There are three criteria:
1) How large is it and do I have room in my luggage?
2) Does it represent my experience?
3) Will I get busted at Customs for bringing an illegal rock into the United
States?
The first rock I ever saved came from Tennessee Beach, just north of San Francisco. I found it in 1976 and there was something about it, or my state of mind at the time, that spoke to me.
It was not pocket-sized. It weighed 2 or 3 pounds. It was an ugly rock – I believe the geological term is ignominious – smooth, flat and riddled with veins.
“This is the rock on which I will build my business,” I said. I carried it a mile back to my car, drove it across the country and,
indeed, started a business.
One of the secrets of my business, held in confidence for 20 years by the
many employees who worked there, was that this rock, which we used as a doorstop,
was the key to our alarm system. Before you could leave, if you were the last
person to lock up, you had to push this rock in front of our editing room
door, or you could not activate the alarm system. Every rock holds a secret
within it – its silent role on this earth.
I keep my rocks in a basket my wife puts in the bathroom. Rock collections are not -- without memories attached -- works of art.
My sons, who have adopted this habit, have augmented my collection
with their own, so I can’t even tell you which rock came from which
place. But each has a special meaning to the person who collected it.
Altogether in that basket are all of our secrets. Encrusted in rock. Remembered
for what they meant to us when we discovered them, then forgotten. In our
rock collection, you will find our many fascinations with this world that
God that created.
And they don’t fit in a scrapbook because they are lumpy,
and require a lot of explanation.