Conversation with Magic Stones

(Abstract statues have a bad name for being erudite. Apparently it has no relevance to our life. When I saw one in the museum, I always felt constipated about what it could mean to me. But overtime, I came to appreciate their "silence" as their reluctance to expose themselves eagerly -- a sign of modesty and dignified reservedness. They only reveal their meaning when the right timing and the sensitivity of the viewers intersect. 

There is one such statue in my university. It is called Conversation with Magic Stones. It meant nothing to me until one day, when I was in a state of vulnerability, it striked me unexpectedly. If you are a Trinity student or professor, I hope this essay on Magic Stones could make you more curious about it. Personally, this is also an exercise for practicing writing about arts)

An acquaintance with suffering seem to be a prerequisite to appreciate life’s subtle offering. This explains why I passed by the statuary of Magic Stones a zillion times without paying attention to it until on one special night it suddenly opened up its magic to me. I have had a long day when I returned to the campus, still in shock about the suffering that I had witnessed that day (I would love to tell you what I witnessed, but it would steal the spotlight). In the state of shock, my frontal cortex halted, and my senses were grasping for any sign of consolation. Then when my gaze brushed past the Magic Stones, an unexpected impression struck me that the Magic Stones was speaking to me, even to the entire university. There was a sense of dynamism that emanated from the Stones that circulated through, and embraced in the entire campus. Why did I feel this interlocking dynamics between a statuary and the campus? I looked around, and for a moment tried to become sympathetic with the buildings and the site. It must have something to do with its location. The Magic Stones is in a kind of epi-center of the university, and can be seen from six paths leading to the Stones. It is the singular place on campus that welcomes gazes from most directions. And six stones, in reciprocity, each faces a different direction, as if wanting to oversee the campus in all its cardinal points, and to envelop the entire campus inside its gaze.

But the interconnectedness of the statuary and campus also stems from the posture of the Magic Stones. Three short bulky Stones weight heavily upon the ground, anchoring down the campus in the image of a stone that sits upon a flimsy paper to secure it against the wind. Three erect Stones, on the opposite, stand handsomely upright, pointing to the sky. Two erect stones, with their sides shaped in a gentle curve, resemble boat sails that know to transform the wind’s force into the momentum of moving. Suddenly, I perceived the relationship between the Magic Stones and the campus to be one of the mentorship. The Magic Stones is teaching the Trinity campus, and everyone in it, a way of holding ourselves in the space that communicates a sense of integrity – feet firmly on the ground, arms open to the incoming force, the spine erect, and the crown pointing straight towards the cosmos above.

The Magic Stones, apparently, also has an ancient mystery to tell, and it is inherent in the material that it is made of – the stone. Humans seem to feel a natural fascination towards the irregularity of stones in general, and an impulse to arrange them in ways faithful to our subtle aesthetics. When travelers stack and balance stones into a tower, it is perhaps about a subconscious desire to find balance ourselves in this irregular universe. Likewise, Nahuatl people in Northern Mexico would arrange stones in a concentric pattern during a ceremony --probably an attempt to mimic how energy flows according to their vision. And observing the Magic Stones, I cannot avoid the association with monolithic monuments in the Easter Island, or the Stonehenge in England that is a remnant of the Neolithic age. Humans’ relationship with stones, especially a complex of stones feels ancient. Though we have never lived in the Stone Age, nor have we experienced an indigenous ritual, our body somehow remembers that mysterious ancient allure of stones. The Magic Stones, impregnated with its ancient allusion, posited now in a modern American campus is then not only stretching the spacious integrity of the campus, but also opening up the vortex of the temporality. Whenever we care to feel, the Magic Stones would transport us back through time to our primitive past, and turn Trinity into the site of an ancient ritual, assuring us that no evil could unfold under its magical spell.