8.22.09

Journal excerpt (7.1.09)

Stonehenge, mysterious and beautiful, looms here in the English countryside. I feel like time has given these stones more reverence than research or discovery ever could. More a part of nature I feel than of this our human or man-made realm. The birds have the privilege to touch the stones while we cannot; the grass growing and clouds passing in their gentle, peaceful purposes while we perhaps only see and try to hold on to that eternal feeling that nature has seemingly perfected. And, in a sense, I feel like this message is of this massive structure most prevalent: simply by existing and by previously allowing our human hands to arrange its stone faces, it still whispers of the eternity of nature no matter its human or elemental interactions. It is so beautiful; inspiring in the way it casts its shade and pulls a permanence into the green and gray of its countenance. But perhaps the permanence and grace were always there--manifest in the grace of a living earth. Perhaps we have only just managed to glimpse it by harnessing our temporary stay to connect ourselves to a potential we long to share. Hence, we have not constructed, but simply organized an already-present grace and beauty. And beautiful it is.

I like it better as it is; pictures of a completed Stonehenge are somehow less impressive to me. I think its more beautiful now that nature has pulled it back into herself; a completed structure would speak more of a human purpose while an old, incomplete structure reminds the viewer that, as previously mentioned, the human interaction was simply that of organization.