Pebbles and a pillow

Friday Fragment #21

There are few things that grace the palm quite so agreeably as a pebble. In the words of Finnish architect, Juhani Pallasmaa, the pebble ‘…materialises duration, it is time turned into shape’. We can assert this for other forms too – nature provides so many – from the fossilised remains of former life to the oak tree that towers and sprawls, trunk and bough, high and wide above us. I think too of where the lacquer and paint at the fore-edge of my desk has lifted – the strain of several hundred gentle carpal abrasions each time I sit to type. Of the concave shapes left behind in sofa cushions, and the quiet hollow of the pillow I walk away from each morning. The sustained weight and movement of continuing time. Without necessarily having ever travelled so far, the smoothness of the pebble has been determined by the movement of water over thousands of years, by countless billion repeat motions, linking all of us to all of the life that came before. There’s a voicemail this morning from Mum, telling me that the day’s forecast looks promising, that the sky is blue and the sun is shining. She is sure that it will be the same where I am and adds that, ‘the sun always shines over the righteousness (sic).’ I smile, charmed that she has thought to embroider her weather report with more than mere verb. Those Biblical words originate from the book of my namesake. They’re often misquoted: Matthew explains that the sun will rise on both the evil and the good, that rain will fall on both the righteous and the unrighteous. We are equal, can err and do wrong, but we can still experience the warmth and fresh light of tomorrow. We should be aware that rain can also follow a virtuous act, too. I like to think that Mum, whose own loose-ish faith has not so much lapsed, but is one she observes and speaks of more lightly in recent years, knows something of where those words came from and a feel for what they might mean. I’m sat on the beach turning pebbles in my hand as I listen to her note, the dog and waves in loop, chasing and retreating from one another in front of me. I slip a few small material forms of duration into my pockets: Carrara white, porcini beige, grey in hues that only the salt of sea and the flare of sun can paint, and a snail’s shell of incandescent orange. They are each smooth to the touch, the ones kindest and most likely to remind of place and time; those which will one moment return this warmth and perhaps Mum’s words to my thoughts. She was right: the sky is blue and the sun is shining.

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