Eleven years ago while studying with Wendell Berry at Schumacher College, England, in a course entitled "Nature as Teacher", one of the texts we read was William Shakespeare's play "As You Like It". A defining moment for me came when the exiled Duke Senior talks of the advantages of living in a forest paradise (Act II, Scene 1). Here, he says, one "finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones and good in everything..." Defining for two reasons. One, that Shakespeare, four hundred hears ago, had a deep ecological understanding of the earth. Two, that it was possible for stones and trees to literally, as well as metaphorically, teach us something. My appreciation for Shakespeare deepened and I never again looked at a stone in the same way as before.
Today, Sunday, is the 101th journal entry for "Life at the Edge". To mark this special occasion, I have gone to the beach and placed 100 stones in a grid pattern to symbolise the previous 100 stories (mini sermons) presented over this past year. The grid represents the formal aspects of thinking through an event and organising it in a way that might make sense. The placement next to the water is to remind me that no matter how exquisite and "time consuming" my efforts might have been, eventually these stones/these stories, will be washed away or covered in sand and soon forgotten. The object lesson is to enjoy the moment of the writing and the behavioural process of being in that moment of writing or photographing and leave it at that. Remain humble without feeling insignificant. Tomorrow..... a new garden.
Posted by Peter Adams at 10:45 AM. Filed under: Art •
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