...INNER STILLNESS

It seems keeping company with stones is
Keeping company with eternity
From such a distant place
That still resides in me.
We hear it in silence.
We feel it in stones.....
And you release it in this gathering together.
----- Neva Gagliano

The above piece of poetry was written by Neva who also sent me these wrapped rocks and heart shaped rock. Her wonderful blog is called Openings Connecting and you can find it here.

Newest acquisitions: One Ammonite and two trilobites - fossils

"Although cycles of time can express permanence, in the garden the clearest symbol of eternity is the rock, an image of the mountain." Marc Peter Keane, The Art of Setting Stone

"I speak of naked stones.. in which there is both concealed and revealed a mystery that is slower, more vast, and heavier than the destiny of a transitory space." Roger Caillios

The stone was there before the wind,
before the man, before the dawn:
its first movement
was the first music of the river.
---- Pablo Neruda, Stones of the Sky

In Japanese gardens, compostion follows from placement of the first stone: all elements become interconnected. The same can be said for painting, or collaging papers, or assemblage. We make decisions whenever we make a mark, place a paper, paint a shape, or attach an object. There is something in the artistic experience, in the moment of creation, that is entirely onto itself, private and untransferable. Finding this stillness within ourselves for every moment of creativity, is our connection.

ELEGANCE

All that is cared for.

Left Alone in the stillness

In that pure silence married

to the stillness of nature.

---- Linda Gregg

"Because I cannot work except in solitude, it is necessary that I live my work and that is impossible except in solitude."
----- Pablo Picasso, 1881-1973