Mexico City, 24.08.19.
The oldest rocks described in the Mexico Basin are Cretaceous limestones, overlaid by Oligocene (26.0 Ma) and Miocene (22.8–5.0 Ma) volcanic successions, followed by Pliocene-Pleistocene (3.7–1.2 Ma) to Recent volcanic rocks around the basin.
Rocks have always held a great significance to me. In the quietest of wildernesses, in the bustling megalopolis, there is an unfathomable sense of time imbued in them. An endless ongoing-ness to the relationship they hold with the activities of the world around them, in their wind-smoothed surfaces, in their water-bored scars, in their statuesque stillness as the world busies behind them. They have stories to tell us, if we give them the time. If we slow down to a fraction of the slowness they demonstrate to us.
"How can I become a rock?” I ask them.
Abernethy, 29.07.20.
- Dear rock, I am scared that I am alone.
​
- I have existed for millennia, and I have seen all of human history and it is a fleeting wisp compared to me. I have been split from the bedrock, spewed up from under the earth, carried by ice and water. I have seen your ancestors from the dawn of human history lead all the way to you. The difference between you and them is nothing to me. You think you are alone, but you cannot comprehend aloneness. The ancestors of a thousand generations walk behind you, but you cannot see them, for you are always facing forward.
​
- Dear rock, I am scared I will never find the purpose to my existence.
- I have existed for millennia, and have supported many who stand upon me and sheltered many who lay hidden beneath. My purpose is to them. I have been host to lichens and mosses of every variation who turn me into soil, and have provided to roots who wrap around me. My purpose is to them. I have been subject to wind and rain and the baking sun, and ice between my scars. My purpose is to be broken and reshaped, and to absorb heat and cast shadows. To me, a day is nothing; yet today I have a thousand purposes. I have existed for millennia, my purpose is to do so.
- Dear rock, I am scared of dying and what is to become of me when I am dead.
- I have existed for millennia, and I have seen all of your ancestors be born and die in a fleeting wisp of time. The difference between you and them is nothing to me. You have died a thousand times already. You die every day. Those who lived a thousand generations ago, to me, are no less you than the you who was borne by your mother. Your life is constant death. You are born from death. Death is your mother, your ancestor, your former self; death is who you were yesterday. I have sat here for a time you cannot comprehend, unchanged, but I too have died countless deaths.
We die together, forever.
​
Athens, 01.09.19.
​
Rocks are so ancient and so beyond our ability to fathom time, and yet we have such and important, intrinsic and historical relationship with the rocks that surround us. I imagine a life in them. I imagine the sounds they have heard, the hands that have been laid upon them before I have laid my own hand upon them, the things they have seen for millennia. And they’re all here with us. They’ve seen all of humanity come before us and they are all here with us now. Some are sand, now; eroded and worn down to multiples of something smaller than what they once were. Some are eaten by lichens and mosses that are growing on them, digesting the rock and transforming that rock into soil. And that soil is what new life springs out of.
​
Rocks are part of the living environment – the living ecosystem. They are alive. Not so much as animals, pumping blood through veins about a circulatory system; or as plants photosynthesising and nourishing themselves from the sun; but alive in that they exist as part of the environment – as part of the landscape.
We have such an intimacy with rocks. What can they tell us? What are they saying to us if we only take the time to listen? If we lay our ears to them, if we put our hands on them, what do we feel? What is our relationship with these rocks that have existed for so long and with which we have existed for so long in such an intimate way? They have been a part of our society in terms of construction – religious, practical and artistic – for about as long as we have been constructing. In Malta, for instance, Globigerina Limestone was, for a long time, the only building material available. It was used in the construction of the megalithic temple structures of Hagar Qim, one of the oldest man-made structures in the world. That same rock is still used in Malta today.
​
How can we understand that relationship? How can we truly feel the closeness of that bond – I will go so far as to call it such – and learn the lessons they inevitably have to teach us? Initially, I am so bewildered by the feeling of this closeness and the presence of these ancient rocks that all I can do is sit back and not know whether to laugh or to cry – and I think perhaps that might be the only way we can ever really understand anything – but what I intend to do is to share that same experience, and to present it as concisely as I can manage.
​
​
Snowdon, 04.09.20.
- Dear rock, I am scared that I am alone.
​
- I have existed for millennia, and I have seen all of human history and it is a fleeting wisp compared to me. I have been split from the bedrock, spewed up from under the earth, carried by ice and water. I have seen your ancestors from the dawn of human history lead all the way to you. The difference between you and them is nothing to me. You think you are alone, but you cannot comprehend aloneness. The ancestors of a thousand generations walk behind you, but you cannot see them, for you are always facing forward.
​
- Dear rock, I am scared I will never find the purpose to my existence.
- I have existed for millennia, and have supported many who stand upon me and sheltered many who lay hidden beneath. My purpose is to them. I have been host to lichens and mosses of every variation who turn me into soil, and have provided to roots who wrap around me. My purpose is to them. I have been subject to wind and rain and the baking sun, and ice between my scars. My purpose is to be broken and reshaped, and to absorb heat and cast shadows. To me, a day is nothing; yet today I have a thousand purposes. I have existed for millennia, my purpose is to do so.
- Dear rock, I am scared of dying and what is to become of me when I am dead.
- I have existed for millennia, and I have seen all of your ancestors be born and die in a fleeting wisp of time. The difference between you and them is nothing to me. You have died a thousand times already. You die every day. Those who lived a thousand generations ago, to me, are no less you than the you who was borne by your mother. Your life is constant death. You are born from death. Death is your mother, your ancestor, your former self; death is who you were yesterday. I have sat here for a time you cannot comprehend, unchanged, but I too have died countless deaths.
We die together, forever.
​