No News is Good News

Instead of reading daily news of a morning, as part of the September news and social media break, have been reading the teeny chapters of a book called ‘Lapidarium: The Secret Life of Stones’.  It is an enthralling book, which comprises eclectic stories about precious gems and stone; a Spanish Maharani with a moon-shaped emerald that once adorned an elephant’s forehead. Stones discovered, prized, then, like malachite, relegated when unfashionable.  Shipwrecked treasure, geological discoveries, and opulence, inspiring Russian Fairy Tales.  The ravaging of the earth; the shocking amount of water and contamination caused by fracking black shale.  Irony of the multi-billion dollar industry supplying ‘earth-mothers’.  A guilty party, I prefer the more romantic, beguiling stories to start the day with; so much for absorbing guilt-free news.  It seems the Universe wants my eyes wide open. 

Googled the author, found her online giving a geologically geopoetical book talk alongside an artist called Ilana Halpern.  Ilana was born the same year (1973) as a volcano in Iceland blew it’s top, creating the volcanic cone, Eldfell.  In an expression of glorious creativity, she thinks of this volcano as her geologic twin.  To paraphrase, as tectonic plates move at the same rate as human fingernails grow, in the spirit of art and our familial Earth, why not have a geologic twin?  Why not indeed?  In 1961, the volcanic island of Tristan de Cunha blew it’s top, necessitating the 264 islanders being taken first to South Africa and then to Hampshire to live for two years until the island was deemed safe. It was named for the Portuguese explorer who discovered it (1506) and its capital is ‘Edinburgh of the Seven Seas’.  That settled it.  A geological twin has been claimed; the remotest inhabited place in the world.  My fingernails are growing in geopoetical oneness. 

‘Lapidarium: The Secret Life of Stones’ Judah. H. John Murray 2022

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Delgado

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geopoetics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldfell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_da_Cunha