Still Stones

I like to keep still. sitting or standing, body still, face still, breathing soft. Whether my mind goes far off into the vast depths of imagination, or is being entrained to remain passive, or is casually surfing between awake and sleep. For years, I have liked to keep still, for hours at a time, inhabiting some book, and in my later years admiring the sensations in my body, and my ever slowing breath.

I was studying my hands today. I like to do that too, to see the changes. My finger pads on my right hand, their ridges are arranged in a spiral beginning in the middle of the pad of the digit farthest from my heart. All four of them, and the thumb. On my left hand, none. All the five patterns on my left hand are similar to eachother, and dissimilar to those on my right hand. I will study my toes sometime soon and report on them. Those on my left hand are like a bird's eye view of the sharply distinct contours of a very thin, finger like plateau, which has extremely steep edges, so many parallel lines close together. Each skinny plateau occupies the middle of each finger and thumb pad.

Today we were shown how to build dry stone walls. The stones are shaped by banging them with the edge of a hammer to make right angles. Small stones are used to balance the bigger right-angled ones and make them secure (not wobbly). What ancient work, how simple, finding stones and gathering them together, separating big and small, and building straight, sturdy walls with all these odd, uniquely shaped, one of a kind stones...