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.