Comments on: In league with the stones

By: PJ

PJ — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:48:33 +0000

Thank you for IRFD. Well done!

By: PJ

PJ — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:47:51 +0000

The video was wonderful as was the scripture and poem. Once i started looking at everyone’s posts I started thinkng video might be a good way to capture scurriers to difficult to photograph and now I see the scurriers also include curious, engaged, golden children.

By: beth

beth — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:14:51 +0000

Wonderful poem and video, Dave. Like Pete I really liked the first line, and watching the rock-flipping, but it was also great to read through the comments and hear your niece’s little excited voice in the background saying “I found one!”

By: Dana

Dana — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 04:11:21 +0000

There *is* nothing like water. True dat.

By: Joan

Joan — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 23:47:24 +0000

“More wondrous
than any gold, this human
being!”

I flashed on that scene from Silas Marner where Silas loses his gold. He awakens, and confused, for a moment reaches out to tentatively touch the pale blond hair of the sleeping child Eppie, thinking he had found it. Little did he know he had.

Yea! I had previously “borrowed” the still photo of last year’s Marsha expedition with grand children to illustrate my silly song here at home printer publishing house. Now I have a movie and an actual poem to go with!

If a poem can be judged by how many ideas spring up from its metaphors, this one is pretty much gold. Its juxtaposition with mother and niece panning for gold bugs in the stream would indicate you drived much inspiration there also. I identified with Marsha’s statement that she keeps on rock flipping when the little one is on to something else. That’s how I acquired my expanded Cub Scout rock collection. (grin)

By: Bill

Bill — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:45:00 +0000

I’d about have to think there might be something positive about a flipped, un-repositioned rock. Maybe I’m just a natural born apologist for modernity and as you know… I’m no entomologist nor ecologist, but I’m sure I’ve read a paleontologist who wrote that plants and animals once capitalized on the opportunities which turned up in the havoc wreaked by gomphotheres and mastodons: access to foodstuffs, new places to settle, and that they miss it now, that the present stability is sterile.

I know the IRFD hasn’t been around long enough for wrens and robins — or molds or who knows! — to get in sync and take advantage, and yes, I know, nipple-toothed bulldozers are doing the work of mastodons and then some — I’m just looking at it from the other side.

OK — Done — All put back.

By: pohanginapete

pohanginapete — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:35:31 +0000

“Rocks are the roofs of a city/we barely know”

That has to be a prime contender for the epiphany-of-the-event. I really like the ways you’ve seen things — the talus as a muddled puzzle, the way only humans replace rocks, the ants frantic (the perfect word). A poem dense with imagery and insight. Wonderful, Dave.

By: rr

rr — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:45:37 +0000

1) I want your mother. Now, here. Although London pavements only flip when you least expect or want it so maybe I’ll have to move there.
2) While watching the video before reading the poem I marvelled at the tenderness with which the rocks were unflipped. I’m not sure it’s always entirely uneasyness, such tenderness, is it?
3) No. There is nothing more wonderous.

By: Natalie d'Arbeloff

Natalie d'Arbeloff — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:33:28 +0000

Indeed more wondrous than gold. What a great addition to the flippin’rock day, Dave. Lovely little film, in every way.

By: dale

dale — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:27:33 +0000

You see, in Pennsylvania you’ve got those really *old* rocks, which are better for flipping. We’re a little rock-handicapped here in the Willamette valley.

“… our made world’s
humdrum El Dorados…”

Is what struck deepest, in the poem, for me.