Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Limestone

If it form the one landscape that we, the inconstant ones,
Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly
Because it dissolves in water.
Mark these rounded slopes
With their surface fragrance of thyme and, beneath,
A secret system of caves and conduits; hear the springs
That spurt out everywhere with a chuckle,
Each filling a private pool for its fish and carving
Its own little ravine whose cliffs entertain
The butterfly and the lizard; examine this region
Of short distances and definite places..
---Auden

Before Aristotle, it seems, people believed that the soul was a material element or a combination of them. I like this idea, this notion that earth and spirit are connected once again and wonder about my own friends and family, if I could, like Primo Levi, draw up a Periodic Table and place each of them in it, thinking closely about how the properties of the element matched their souls..and what that would say about me!

About 3 & 1/2 people read this blog so it shouldn't be too difficult. Let's see...
C: ....
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Celia said...

Limestone Days
‘The primary source of the calcite in limestone is most commonly marine organisms.’
You can see the fossils everywhere. ‘Look, Miss! Fossils -The walls are wriggling with them!’ (Thank you, David Bourne, 1973.)

‘Pure limestone is almost white.’ But impurities cause it to exhibit different colours.

For fifteen years years I lived with the Peak District limestone. It is a fairy landscape, a landscape of myths and legends, of huge cliffs and Coleridge’s ‘deep romantic chasms’, gorges, sometimes thickly wooded, where fast-running rivers rush over boulders and weirs. But it is also a hard landscape, hard stone, rough half-hewn quarries abandoned to the wheeling ravens whose cries echo melodiously from the quarry walls.

Who was I then? Who set out each morning, astonished and awed by the craggy cliffs, the sheer and lofty rock-faces dropping into the Derwent? Limestone days were hard: days of loss, days of change, time to cast off from old attachments, trust new fealities. Those were my Limestone days.

Sandstone Days
‘Some sandstones are resistant to weathering, yet are easy to work. Fine-grained aquifers, such as sandstones, are more apt to filter out pollutants from the surface than are rocks with cracks and crevices, such as limestones or other rocks fractured by seismic activity.’

For twenty years now I have lived with sandstone. The house is built with sandstone, the garden is walled in sandstone, the beach is littered with sandstone boulders and pebbles. The gravestones of generations of sailors lost at sea, piled up now against the church wall, are sandstone. Lit by the spectacularly garish sun-sets of the western coast, sandstone glows pinker and redder. It is a soft, warm stone, warm to the eye, warm to the feet in summer. It wears, erodes - the house is slowly turning back to sand. A stone to settle with, maybe a stone to die with, comforting as soft sand-shoes. Who am I now? Who walks the beach barefoot, counting the hours?

I wish you would warm to it
Llike the rock-face and the water below
Be not forthright
Not devious
I am not wishful
How watery my eyes are.
Anthony Barnett

1:03 PM

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