This IS NOT A Stone (#70)

Old Chinese Narrative

There was a man from Stji who was fiercely fond of gold. Early one morning he got up, dressed, put on his cap and went to the market, where he passed by a gold exchange office.

He grabbed the gold like a raven and made a run for it. The policeman who seized him asked, "What possessed you to grab that gold with all those witnesses around?"

"When I saw the gold, I no longer saw the people, only the gold," the man replied.

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Number 70 in the continuous series "This IS NOT A Stone"

To watch the previous post in this series follow this link to: 'This IS NOT A Stone #69'

Or start at the beginning: 'Everything In One Stone'

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Choosing this simple, mediocre sand stone in 1986 to be his focal point for meditation and thoughts, artist Jan van Krieken doesn't need much more; a symbol for the slipping of time, a bit of eternity amidst an ever faster moving and changing world.

While investigating and researching the artist automatically arrived at "The Philosopher's Stone", the mysterious substance that alchemists had sought for centuries. Van Krieken found out that they were essentially looking for the same thing as he was looking for by means of the stone in his pond; the pure and the everlasting.

Almost 32 years of observing and photographing that one sand stone. Sometimes covered with snow, sometimes occupied by a bird, or hidden by fallen leaves, protected by ice or serving as a warm bed for a salamander this cycle of change became a metaphore for life itself.