So Stoned

Hi. I'm Davka and I'm a stone addict.




That's me. In my hands are some of my favorite gemstones: rhodochrosite, aventurine, amazonite, chrysoprase. After buying this lot from a friend, I kept taking them all out of their individual bags and arranging them carefully across my bed, the table, on the sleeping cat, my legs, everywhere. I would become lost in each stone and its intricate, naturally occurring beauty- the crystalline structures sparkling under the smooth glassy surface of the green aventurine like little bursts of stars at the birth of the universe, the forest green color so deep, it immediately evoked within me a primal desire to go running into the woods and to never come out again. Its dark, dense green was so arresting that I was sure it would stir even the most dormant imagination into a remembrance of ancient mysteries of the earth, the hunt, the animal in the human. I then took out the rhodochrosite and my mouth watered a little from the pink, so pink, pink so purely pink it made my mouth want to taste it as I would want to taste strawberry ice cream. I thought about its other name, "Inca Rose," and how the ancient Incas believed that rhodochrosite, in its purest rose color red, was the blood of their kings and queens kept forever in sacred stone. Wow! Then the Chrysoprase, Holy Mother, the Chrysoprase! Such a green! An apple green! A green so green it was like the poet Sherman Alexie said of his grandmother's apple tree, "The first green God ever made." The green...

"Davka?"
"Huh?" I looked up from my endless, shimmering stoner dream and into my boyfriend's eyes as he stood above me with a plate of food. "What's up?"
"I've been calling for you. Dinner's ready."
"Oh," I looked around the room and remembered where I was. In our living room with my lot of gemstones arranged in a sweeping spiral across the wooden floorboards. I laughed, embarrassedly. "I'm sorry. I didn't hear you."

He smiled, turning toward the kitchen and I stood up to follow him.

"You know," he said, "you're gonna have to give those up. You're going to use them and sell them."

Ugh! Ouch! It was true. I would one day part with every single stone as I used them in my designs, or, more accurately used my designs to give each stone its proper bed of beauty and silver and then, its destined home. For a moment this realization hurt. I tried to think of a way out of it. Maybe I could keep them, all of them? With my others, I have a substantial amount. Maybe, I could put them in the bathtub and sit with them every day for a few hours. Maybe I could polish every single one every morning until one day, like a Pharaoh, they can bury me with them, laying naked save for a simple cotton dress, surrounded by my bed of stones. Maybe...

Sigh, sweet stoner love, there is no way around it. I have to eventually give you up. Truly loving something means knowing it was never yours, right? Isn't that what they say?

"It's ok," I told my boyfriend, sobering up a bit as we ate together. "I am sending them out into the world to be worn by others and that is a great honor."

And it is. If I sound crazy for saying this, that's ok, because there's thousands of years of indigenous wisdom backing me up when I say it: stones are living beings. I know, I know, that's crazy or hocus pocus or New Agey, but call it what you want, I know it and I've always known it, even as a little girl and when I remember things I knew as a little girl, I trust them more than anything. Stones communicate intelligence, ancient history, creativity, and so much more. It is a great honor to work with them and to know that your work will be adored by the little girl inside of a woman who will gasp with delight when she opens the box and sees her new beautiful stone and the stone will be happy being seen and praised as the woman (or man!) walks around wearing it and the ancient shamans and earth-close ancestors inside of every viewer will blink awake and, for a moment, they will remember what it is to speak to the stones, to hold the earth as sacred, or to simply be lifted up by beauty, to be made better for the hour or day.

In being an artist and crafter, you are always taking parts of yourself and your world, putting them together in some new way and then, ultimately, if you're doing it right, giving them up. It's a really cool way to talk to the world, like putting a little message into a bottle and throwing it out to sea- I never know where it will inevitably end up, but I know I did something unique, something beautiful.

My boyfriend smiled and patted my knee. "Good, don't go getting all stoned on me."
We laughed. "I'm not," I said, "I mean, I won't."
"Good."

I didn't tell him that I was still seeing the living shimmer of the aventurine everywhere, even after blinking several times. It was in my head like some new glaze on reality. Probably just an optical illusion from staring for too long at one stone, I thought. I wouldn't want him to worry.