I hold a large rock in my hand and make tiny adjustments which I imagine are barely discernible to anyone watching.
The rocks will collapse and I will start again.
Life is like that. We build our lives up and sometimes everything will come tumbling down all around us.
Sometimes it will fall down on its own, other times we have to knock it down ourselves in order to rebuild it in the way we want it to be.
It is all experience. The most valuable lessons in life come when we fall down.
As I place rock upon rock I am constantly in awe at the stillness, let alone possibility, of such precarious formations, amidst sometimes very turbulent conditions. This reflects our own potential to maintain a still-point amidst the variety of challenges we each face throughout our lives.
All things are difficult before they become easy.
What is fundamental about the sculptures is their simplicity, with the stones balanced together to create a seemingly impossible composition. The improbable equipoise creates a sense of wonder in the onlooker and gives the sculpture a magical presence, a paradox of fragility and solidity. Just like life.
The stones seem to lock onto each other and stay in place as soon as that precarious yet unmistakable point of balance has been found within them.
The stones decide when they are in perfect alignment with each other and the solar system. The stones reach the point of harmony with each other and the planet. The only thing holding one precarious stone on another is gravity, that incredible force that forms the stars, which shaped the earth, and which holds things together – or causes them to fall down when they are out of alignment.
There is something beautifully simple about deciding to balance stones. Being a grown up in the modern world is so often characterised by planning ahead and the pressure to succeed. An activity like stone balancing is is just on the right side of pointless and therein lies its beauty. The simple decision to do nothing else for an hour other than balancing stones in a river is to surrender to absolute freedom. We can return to the wild abandon of our childhood and open ourselves up to the abundance of the universe.
I stop planning, I stop trying to achieve.
The present moment is all I have.