In the desert near my childhood home there is this leucite monolith -- a volcanic neck -- that has emerged from the eroding sandstone over the last couple of million years and now stands 400' above the desert floor. It existed for a million years before the first small, mostly-ape proto-humans made an appearance in Africa. It's been a landmark since the first humans saw it tens of thousands of years ago, and maybe before that if you believe myths and theories and sci-fi variants about pre-humans who might have also navigated the earth.
At any rate, it's been there for any reasonably human concept of forever and will be there forever. It's been there all my life and will be for all of my life. You pretty much can't get there from here, no matter where here is, unless you've got a heavyweight four-wheel drive and excellent nav aids. When I was a kid, I'd hike out to this thing a couple of times a year, climb the mound to the rock face and up into the saddle, sometimes climb the rock for 50' or so before I'd chicken out. I'd camp there, usually alone, sometimes with a friend or two, with this rock looming over me, a black hole punched in the Milky Way, unmoving, unflinching, an unconcerned resident of Deep Time marking the earth's subliminal heartbeat as the universe revolved around it. There's no wonder that entire religions are founded on the wisdom of stones.
Even now, all these years later, and until I'm just too old to get there or be dragged there, I will go back to that unchanging marker, that touchstone, that place in my life where I'm suddenly grounded and back where I belong. Sometimes a couple of times a year. Sometimes only once in two or five years. I put my hands on the ancient liquid bones of the earth, frozen solid as eternity, rooted down through miles of crust almost to the magma of the mantle, and lean back against them in the exact spot I found as a youth. And the sunrise roars over the desert horizon and the rock's shadow extends to the end of the world. Then, always, I go back to the rest of my life, but refreshed, ready to get on with it, secure in the knowledge that I can always go back to that place, that moment, from now till forever.
It's what touchstones are all about, you know.
I was just talking with a friend about touchstones. I use them in my best writing, courtesy of a man you despise (Deck), where I have a single sentence that I return to constantly to be sure I'm on the right track.
ReplyDeleteI like to have a few touchstones in my life. I still sometimes tweet one of mine: "Breathe."
It's funny how a bumper sticker phrase can be a touchstone, too. Lots of my 12-step group phrases can be touchstones for me at different times.
Fucking amazing, how you write of your connection to this thing.
ReplyDeleteYeah. Not much into spirituality and all that noise -- but I like things that reach into deep time. I like things that are forever. There are just not many that I feel like I can actually touch and KNOW, and the ones there are connect with me in strange ways and places.
ReplyDeleteWhat Don said. I'm envious. I want a place like that. I think I may have to try Serenebabe's method.
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