How many pebbles
have you kicked?
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How many pebbles have you kicked?
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As I walk down the boulevard, I kick gravel with my cheap canvas shoes in a whimsically destructive manner. Whimsical, because there is no specific reason to do so, the way that small children insist in stamping in mud puddles in order to learn and re-learn the laws of physics; destructive, because it scuffs the soles of the shoes unnecessarily. Without thinking, most people subconsciously believe that random pebbles and gravel appear as if from nowhere on the (they assume) indestructible surface of the ubiquitous pavement of our modern cities, not realizing it to be the persistent shedding of that very surface's skin — a seasonal offcasting, the discarded skin of a cement serpent.
The very bedrock of modern construction, made of coarse and fine aggregate all bonded by cement powder, growing together under the influence of hydration to become the dull, sprawling skeleton-in-waiting of a medieval society given fancy tools too soon. In this dust and detritus are depths yet unplumbed, there are colors yet unglimpsed, there are structures yet unconceived. I kick another pebble of coarse aggregate that ricochets in such a way that recalls the primal wonder of childhood's realization that each vector is unique — one can never skip a stone on a surface of water quite the same way twice — and not just because it is sunk beneath the surface once thrown.
It recalls, but does not resurrect, such wonder. It sketches a rough outline of such mundane rapture and leaves off halfway — perhaps daubing a few lazy patches of paint on the mental canvas before abruptly abandoning the image in production. In other words, I look at the pebble skipping but see it only representationally; I am unable to appreciate and perceive it as it is because of the rapidity of the adult mind's near-instant intellectualization.
I sigh. Dreams and their patina, memories of dreams, feelings and the phantoms of feelings made into urns for the grieving of themselves, thoughts and the evasive density of thoughts incinerated, ground to ash and discarded or perhaps dissolved into saline aqua — whether macrocosmic or microcosmic, a dead sea of tears or the endless ocean — dryness follows and flakes from me in a swirl of microscopic particles that melts into the inherent humidity of a universe fecund with possibility, ever-young and yet ever-slain, ancient and desiccated in the mind by the relentless attempt to explicate conceptually and not actually. Hydration + dry premixed fine and coarse aggregate and cement = concrete, from concrescere, to grow together.
I shake my head so these psychic convolutions fall away from me like so much unwanted dandruff gathered about my metaphorical scalp. None of this is really important compared to the true existential quandary — How many pebbles have I kicked? Not just on this walk, I mean, but ever. Excluding possibilities of soul transmigration and other unanswerables, I mean, purely empirically. That is, erm, newtonianly, ignoring for a moment the leftover unknown — yes, setting aside the 99.9%. Let's hone in on the solid 0.1%. It's pretty important that we come up with a number here, and equally important that we forget it soon thereafter, like all the boring and substantially inaccurate data read once and put instantly out of mind.
I must have kicked hundreds of pebbles by now. Maybe even thousands. Yeah, probably thousands. Tens of thousands? If I had to hazard a guess, sure — 28,531. Listen, we're nearly past the allotted time for this program, so... let's just bypass the question of what defines a pebble altogether. We'll get to talking about rock clumps, the critical moment when cracks become splits, vectors of fragmentation, measuring by atoms instead of so-called visible entities, et cetera, ad infinitum, ad tedium.
It's easier to just manufacture an arbitrary number so we all go home with a grin on our faces, you know, they all lived happily ever after, and all of that. But now that the fourth wall is completely broken (or did I only have a three-walled hovel to begin with?) I might as well answer the question honestly as if asked by a particularly invested third party. If you'll just allow me some poetic license here... [Aesthetically pleasing shots of urban scenes in ultra-slow-motion, ambient music increases in volume, fade to black, et cetera, et cetera...]
A — I'm really not sure. I lost count a long time ago.
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photographs taken with iPhone 8+
photomanipulations created in Final Cut Pro X
words and images by @d-pendcreated for HIVE on July 22, 2020
#posh stuff —
Pebbles are posh.
A huge hug 🤗 and a little bit of !BEER 🍻 from @amico!
Un caro abbraccio 🤗 e un po' di BEER 🍻 da @amico!
View or trade
BEER.Hey @d-pend, here is a little bit of
BEERfrom @amico for you. Enjoy it!Learn how to earn FREE BEER each day by staking your
BEER.I thought this would be part 2 of the Sandy line. It's interesting to look at your post without seeing any poetry.
As time goes by I see an algorithm for a lot of things, but sometimes the algorithm just quits. Nothing works anymore. It's those times I find myself kicking a pebble.
I stopped intentional kicking of pebbles when I looked at my son follow my steps and do the same thing.
He is an angel and I'd hate to be the one teaching him to kick inanimate objects.
Key word: Asphalt
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Superb penning, Daniel. re-esteemed:)
Somehow I thought you would post something by now. I wonder what you are up to.