The friends at whose apartment I'm staying have a knack for finding lovely stones. Left on a stack of circular rattan placemats on the table (on which also sits a vase with dried lavender and a pair of tiny ceramic animals - Mexican? - a burro, and a hen) is a an oblong piece of flat granite, hardly bigger than a postage stamp. Its markings are as if painted on. I examine the stone, finger and revolve it in my left hand as I write with my right. On either side thin white threads show against dark grey, not parallel lines at all, but crosses, X'es like minimalist bows, encircling the stone like fancy, minimalist raffia gift wrap at Takashimaya, if that shop (on Fifth) exists anymore.
I consider the painful metaphysical conclusion of the Marvell:
Therefore the love which us doth bind
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.
Here is a conjunction on a stone, not parallel lines forever separated that can come together only in a planisphere or globe. The continuous white lines on the slim flat stone cross over, wrap, and cross again on the reverse, binding it together.
Steel cables come together at the summit of arches on the Brooklyn Bridge, I noticed yesterday as I walked across.
There is a second stone too, a quarter or third of the size of the first, a light grey Jordan almond, perfectly plain.
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