OLD Memory Stones
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Memory Stones are markers of quiet beauty and visceral mass, compelling to touch, mutely attesting to complicated personal stories. Inspired in part by reading that after the devastating tsunami of 2011, mysterious stone slabs where found near the high water marks, well above the destroyed Japanese ports. These slabs, obscured by decades of jungle overgrowth, were carved with ancient warnings not to build on lower ground. In that spirit, I offer my Memory Stones as talismans, witnesses and reminders to keep our lives on ‘higher ground’, learn from our mistakes and contain the ‘overgrowth’.
And then there is the other very personal inspiration from which the Stones came: watching loved ones fade from dementia, there is a desperate longing to grab all the memories of a life fully lived and somehow preserve them forever. ‘Carved in stone’ is an old aphorism expressing the general truth of how to preserve that which is sacred, that which is timeless knowledge for the tribe. Such are the Memory Stones but without words. |