4 – The Curvature of Hope
As it leaves your hand, the trajectory of a skipping stone makes a shallow arc, a rising line that perfectly describes the curvature of hope. Gravity takes charge immediately you relinquish control, as you knew it would, as you have learned it does: instead of despair for what is certain, enjoyment comes in testing your command of grade-school ballistics, no attempt to defeat the pull of time but to dance with it, reach your hand beyond a hands’ reach with it, and help that stone be less of a stone for just a little while.
“Skipping Stones” by Tayderp @ DeviantArt.com
World: How does it feel to be buoyed by water, when you are by nature stone?
Mark Schultz (speaking for stone): (smiles)
W: Well, a smile can answer a question, though that one is not so easy to decipher. Was it ironic? Or rueful, contented, delighted?
MS: Yes, a bit of each, and together more than all of the above. Anyone who tells you defying nature is pure delight – being saved by physics when you thought you would drown – clearly hasn’t experienced it. I’ve definitely felt dizzy and buoyed like that, over and over again. I wonder how many skips I’ve got in me…?
W: Let’s hope many more. Tell me about a memorable “skip”.
MS: Ok. Nine months ago I was a bachelor…
W: (laughs)
MS: That wasn’t a punchline.
W: Sorry, sorry.
MS: That apparently is a punchline for you, but it’s a cheap laugh, don’t you think? Nine months ago I was a bachelor (again and still), and my fiancee’s family flew all the way from Colombia to be part of our summertime, backyard, flower-strewn wedding. My own family flew or drove or otherwise came in from the Midwest. My sister made a beautifully decorated cake, and the bride’s family made a traditional dark cake drowned in Marsala wine. Everyone was as much participant as witness. My father performed the ceremony. Friends spoke or sang or cooked or served or photographed and brought all those gifts to the day. After months of long hours and the whirlwind of putting together a multinational event in our remote backyard, with too few beds and not so much food and… well, it was a secular loaves and fishes all over again. It showed exactly how plenty is created from scarcity, as if by magic.
W: A skip?
MS: The waters most certainly caught me, caught us, and tossed us forward.
W: I guess if you are still spinning and have some speed…
MS: It gives you momentum. It’s like there is a perpetual motion machine, and you’re it. Surprise! I wonder if a stone knows how to stop? One month later we were pulling up stakes.
W: You moved to a new home?
MS: Moved to a gypsy camp. Most of our belongings went into storage, until the stone decided which way it would fly. Our friend PJ, Head Gypsy, let us share her wagon. You know how much room there is in a gypsy wagon?
W: Not personally.
MS: The word “room” is singular in a gypsy wagon. And you know what? Delightful. Gypsies know how to share; they’ve learned how to roll with strange developments; they learn how to smile when you don’t necessarily want to smile. They don’t own so much that it owns them. Great experience. Go live with a gypsy sometime.
W: I’ll make a note of it. So was your first answer a “gypsy smile”?
MS: (smiles)
W: And the gypsy life was a skipping stone.
MS: It is now seven months later and in two days, to my own amazement (I think there must have been faeries working all night every night to make it happen – I couldn’t possibly have accomplished all this myself?), a truck will arrive to collect what we haven’t sold or given away, and haul our material life away, to send it bobbing across the Atlantic. I have a couple of days to tidy up the Wagon, put the horse out to graze, and that’s it. That’s it! You may wonder what the skipping stone feels when it flies up in the air again…
W: I can imagine. Even so, sooner or later the momentum dies down, the gyroscope of the stone’s center spins slower, maybe calmer, and finally there is a splash which is not a skip, and that flat stone settles like a leaf into the water, one edge rising then another and back and forth until it sinks out of sight. Where do you think the stone will find a resting place?
MS: (smiles)
“Air and Light” by Michal Karcz @ DeviantArt.com