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| Pentre Ifan |
“In their lichened,
faceted faces we see our lineaments; in their
solitariness, our loneliness, or our need to be
alone; in their gregariousness, our
congregational temper; in their alignment,
our deviousness; in their poised mass, our
fragility; in their rootedness, our
deracination; in their age, our ephemerality;
and in their naked outfacing of time and the
elements, a valuable lesson in patient dissent”
Written by Jan Morris on stones.
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| Standing stones in Dyfed by John Piper |
Wandering in the Shadow of an old Sacred Hill North Yorkshire moors
I love that last line: a valuable lesson in patient dissent. Of course, there is also the proverb:“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds about right Debby. I have been having an amicable argument with my daughter about tea towels. She has at last released her 'vintage'tea towels, and it would a good quote to go on one...
ReplyDeleteI adore John Piper's work and also Jan Morris's words.
ReplyDeleteEvery now and then I have a panic attack about books and whether I've got rid of them. The John Piper went through my mind yesterday Pat.
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine got the job of removing graffiti from a stone at Avebury, using a powerful laser. The laser stopped burning after it removed the paint layer, protecting the lichen. Even the lichen is listed.
ReplyDeleteVandalism by painting on prehistoric stones is happily not a common occurrence, i remember the Rollright stone circle stone being painted. Lichen is listed, probably because it takes such a time to grow and it becomes rarer as pollution grows. I presume the laser stopped burning because of the operator's use.
ReplyDeleteIt delivered a series of flashes and the energy from them was expended on the first layer. The machine kept having to be turned off to cool down.
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