A Fried Egg Instead of a Heart. Almost as Good!

I can't resist putting this fried egg stone up here.  Its not a heart but it has a lot of soul.  This blog has been somewhat replaced by a seasonal e-newsletter from my LovingBlind Productions studio.  If you would like to be on the mailing list please e-mail me at josieiselin@lovingblind.com.  I have a bunch of you on the list already but feel free to e-mail me if you don't think I do. A newsletter will come out mid-November and an archive will be posted (soon!) on my website. Happy heart (and egg) hunting.

One last fall-time heart stone

Who can resist fall foliage combined with a perfect Heart Stone. Thank you Gert Cote.

Off to Maine

We are off to Maine next week. What will we find? More classic stones like this granite from Hurricane Island? I am excited. I am shipping my scanner so that I can be scanning right there on the spot. Happy summer all. Unless I hear from a considerable number of you RockSwappers that you like following this blog, it is going to transform into a newsletter. Look out for it and give me feedback. Thanks for everything.

Sadness with Heart

My dad died two weeks ago.  He was very ill but this leaves it no less of a huge loss.  We paid him a wonderful tribute last Tuesday in Bedford NY on a magnificent spring day.  The stone I describe in the introduction of my book is buried with his ashes.  I miss him terribly.

From Winter to Spring

Both these images are from Jonas and his mother in Norway.  Yes, hearts and heart stones are as potent everywhere, including Norway.  Jonas has a lovely habit:  when he finds a heart stone or finds a heart anywhere, he thinks a good thought about someone.  Maybe we should all be doing this.

What IS in the kitchen sink?

What do you find in your kitchen sink? Once again, thank-you Gert Cote for paying attention and sharing her blessings!

A stone is to hold

To infinite and beyond with a pile of lucky stones.

A hole can be so full...

Look closely!

A Florida Heart Stone from Gert Cote

"I placed it between two boulders in the hopes that when I return next year, it will be in the same spot waiting for me to again admire..."

Gert recounted a story a while ago that I carry around like a heart stone in my pocket..or maybe my bra:

"When clients come to have their nails done, we walk out through my garage and there are my stones, displayed on my husband's ladder and lined up on the floor. As we go out together, they are usually talking about how their life is going and most of the time, their spirit is hurting in some way, so I am moved to give them a stone. They cherish it.

Going to my local grocery store, just before Christmas, I happened to chat with the store manager who knew my sister who also worked at the same chain in a different town. Leaning on a stack of cans at the end of an aisle, she proceeded to tell me about the bad things that were going on in her life: divorce and cancer. My heart was feeling for her--we seemed to have a lot of common "dates" (one of them being my birthday). We hugged and I told her about my stones. I came home and rummaged through my collection and found the perfect one and quickly put it in my purse to give to her the next time we met up.

It was weeks later I saw her and gave her the stone. We hugged and things seemed to be going better for her. Weeks after that, I go in after an exercise class and there she was all bubbly and kept grabbing her breast. As I was thinking, "how strange is that," she pulls my stone from her bra and explains how it makes her feel safe and protected.

Now come on, who would have thought to stow it away in your bra? Anyway she could not carry her purse around the store so the bra was a safe haven!"

Thank you Gert. Remember to give someone a stone....who knows where it might end up!

Heart Stones in the Snow from Shiela Swett

These are lucky stones and scallop shells in the snow.  These icons of summer, found on a hot day along the water's edge, set up as the eternal symbol of love in the heart of winter. Seashells in the snow.  This is the kind of wonderful contradiction or dichotomy that is where powerful meanings lie.  Or where art resides.  Thank you Shiela.

I come back to the contradictions of being a mom.  My original book, Loving Blind, Seeing Red: A Mother's Decade was built on contradiction and dichotomy.  This will be the point of departure for further posts. And I love that each is inspired by the heart stone or beach treasure from some other stone collector out there.

I saw red the other day...for the first time in such a long while.

And Deedee and I saw lots of white. Snow that is, in the Sierras this past weekend...lots and lots of snow.  Skiing in knee deep powder was fun fun fun and physically exhausting.  We live in this pretty fantastic place where we can drive up into the mountains on a Friday night, need chains on our 4-wheel drive car, ski all day Saturday and Sunday in the blizzard (it was about 25-30 degrees out, ie not so very cold), have the highway closed down Sunday night so no coming home then, and then Monday morning, the storm abated,  it was crystal clear blue.  And those that had 9 am meetings left at 6 am and got there just a tad late.  Deedee and I left a bit later...had In N Out burgers at 10:30 am and she made it to her 1 pm science class, after popping home to print out her homework.

Another small blessing from Carol Carlson Gunn

The fossil in here is really special. A small fish. My son and husband were consulting the atlas tonight, looking at the page that shows our solar system in the larger galaxy, the Milky Way, in the larger and larger universe. It is just amazing that life began. The New York Times Thursday's Science Times is also an amazing resource. Endlessly fascinating. And what we learn from a small fish encased in a heart. Thank you Carol.

Collecting Heart Stones, the sisterhood

The folders on my computer devoted to images for this blog are labeled "RockSwap."  That is my vision for this virtual space.  I get many notes and jpgs from folks who love, like I do, the hunt for beach treasure.  While it feels secret and wonderful to think we are the only ones collecting...say, heart stones, there is also great energy in discovering that many others are doing the same thing and starting to connect.  Building community and support through heart stones--what could be better.  So please send me stories and photos of your finds, comment on what you would like to see more of and lets build the virtual beach...like laying out your treasures on a weathered log at the end of the walk before returning to the humdrum of what's for dinner.

Heart Stones - the book

The tiny book of love, Heart Stones, is officially launched for Valentine's Day 2008.  I exhibited a number of prints from the book--from quite large to lovely and small--at ArtHaus gallery in SOMA here in San Francisco and had a raucus book party to accompany the show.  Great food, great friends, plenty of champagne and lots of good vibes.

On thinking about the book for a talk I gave last night, I realized that the power of the book resides in a bit of word play.  Love Rocks, two words that can be construed three different ways to be: 1. about community (the sisterhood of folks that love rocks), 2. about love, that most human of emotions that really is the best, and 3. about these objects (not love beads but love rocks) that are talismans of all that binds us.  These three meanings co-mingle all the way through the book or perhaps chase each other round and round like the four hearts on the half-title page adding resonance with each go-round.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Moss of Love by Shiela Swett

What could be better than finding this on the forest floor. As I say: love is where you find it. Thank you Shiela.

Inukshuk from Nova Scotia by Josette d'Entremont

Josette d'Entremont sent this image of an "Inukshuk" from Nova Scotia. This one is from near Cape Fouchu Lighthouse, Yarmouth, NS. She is a true lover of the beach, claims she has every stone and shell represented in my two books, Beach Stones and Seashells and gains sustenance from beachcombing the way we all gain sustenance from bok choy. I understand so completely.

She writes:

I am a native of a small Acadian fishing village called 'Pubnico' (means "cleared land for farming"), which is located at the SW part of Nova Scotia, Canada on the Lighthouse Route. I live in Halifax (capital of NS) and am an amature photographer, historian, geologist and lover of the seashore (a beachcomber all my life!) and a preservationist for lighthouses. Our Nova Scotia shores have billions of years-old fossils, stones and shells.

"INUKSHUK" means "likeliness of a person" in the Inuit language. It is the symbol of the Human Spirit. For centuries, stone figures, built in the shape of men by the Inuits, have guided lonely travelers in North America and the Artic along the right paths to food, water and shelter. 'Inukshuks' represents strength, leadership and motivation. Some people even say that it represents "I was here". I love making these stone figures as I walk the shoreline, it's fun, inventive --you can build them in any shape or form, using whatever rocks you find) and very meaningful. I also cannot stroll along the beach without picking up a shell, waiting to be admired and wondering what stories it could tell me; where it came from, what did it see?

There is so much to see by the sea!

Thank you, Josette

Gaspe Canada Heart Stone from Gert Cote

Gert Cote, from Massachusetts, is a fellow lover of heart stones and other treasure. She found this stone in Gaspe and writes:



"My husband and I were searching for treasures in the "Baie de Chaleure" in the Gaspe region of Canada...New Brunswick can be seen on the other side. I spotted what looked like a heart stone, but could only see the light green moss just underneath the waters edge. Stepping on different rocks to retrieve it, it layed almost all submerged in the water and mud,( notice the outer dark edge of the stone,) it was one inch in mud, full of slime...but I could see a definite heart, just needed to rinse it off and to my amazement, a perfect "HEART" lay in my hand. My heart was racing and I called to my husband to come and see. To continue on my search for more stones, I placed this stone on a piece of drift wood that had washed up shore from the wood mining mills across the bay in New Brunswick. Even this wood had been weathered from years of being idle on the beach. It had been stripped of all its bark from the harsh winter that Canada has to offer. We continued to pick many stones after that one and have given most of them away to friends and family."



Gert, Thank you for sharing your treasure and initiating the ROCKSWAP that this blog will feature.



Feel free to send me your treasures with their stories and I will post. Lets grow a community based on heart stones!



Dont forget: www.josieiselin.com

Finding Love

A recently married couple I didn't know very well came over to pick up this print which was commissioned as a wedding gift by a mutual and very dear friend. We were hanging around chatting and I couldn't believe they were only just beginning this journey called marriage. We joked a bit and then they said that yes they were so happy and were also pregnant. Wow, starting another huge journey...I put my hands in my pockets(I happened to still have my jacket on)...and there was a heart stone--dark and smooth, left there from the last roam on the beach--and I just couldn't not give it to them right there. So they left with their lovely print titled: Love is Where You Find It and a lovely heart stone. Happy Journeys!

Point Reyes

Happy New Year,

We went for a magnificent hike last Friday, down from the youth hostile, past a most magnificent, solitary Eucalyptus tree and onto the far southern end of Limantour Beach. Once on the beach, the rivulets coming out to the ocean were spectacular. Deedee (My middle daughter) was intent on getting as far as "Sculpture Beach" so she kept far ahead of us urging us on. Ken (my husband) found two complete crab shells with intensely purple insides. Along with a rib from some sea creature (probably a seal) and various other bits of seaweed, he made a very funny face on a log. Always more wondrous treasure to stick in the pockets.

We timed the waves right to scooch around from cove to cove where the rocks have eroded into keyholes and secret caves. Quite amazing and we felt so alone in our secret spots.

The sun emerged for our hike home, where, exhausted, we set out our treasures--stones with stripes, gnarled driftwood and assorted other items--on the counter to see. A fantastic exhibit of a magical day.

This bit of dried squiggly seaweed was found by Deedee...I thought it looked like an R. Crumb eyeball