Painting Stones

A month or so ago, my third novel, Marcelo in the Real World was accepted for publication by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic. Cheryl Klein, my editor, was going to be busy during the month of July with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (also published by Arthur A. Levine and Scholastic) and so we agreed to postpone our initial meeting until early August . (I can’t for the life of me understand why Harry should take precedence over Jasmine, but what do I know!) Jasmine, however, is going to need some revisions and so this interlude between acceptance of the book and figuring out what those revisions will be has been helpful to me. So, besides waiting to see what happens to Harry with just about the rest of humanity, I have been busy (or unbusy) painting stones. On the shores of Singer Island in Florida where I vacation with my family, you find these flat stones the range in diameter from the size of a quarter to that of a small and badly-made pancake. The stones are cool to the touch and gray. They have been smoothed by time and sand and sea. Many of these stones have a hole made God only knows how. (I suspect there is a scientific explanation for the hole but I don’t want to find out. I like my own image of generations of tiny amoeba drilling through eons.) These stones, which I love collecting in my walks, make great gifts. You attach them to a piece of leather or gold chain (depending on the recipient) and there you are. I here confess to being slightly hurt when I see the forced smile on my nieces and nephews as I hand over to them a Christmas-wrapped small box that rattles. Now these stones are perfect just as they have come into the world. I, however, feel compelled to ruin them by making designs on them. I have a shoebox full of paints and indelible magicmarkers with names of colors I have never heard before. The designs I paint on these helpless stones are abstract and can best be described as “Mexican-Mandala.” I start of trying to make a Mandala (like the stone glass windows that you see in the front or back of a cathedral), but I soon make a mistake and then proceed to “redeem” the design painting some a happy fiesta of dotted colors. Why I think that painting stones is the right thing to do during this time of preparation (and anticipation) prior to the revisions to Jasmine is this: I paint stones in silence and my mind slowly attunes itself again and rejoices in the simple act of attention, as if this were the mind’s most natural and happy state. There is in the miniscule and detailed motions of my hands precision enough to require concentration but the object of concentration is playful enough so that it can be carried out with abandon. I care about the process not the results and in this there is, as in all true play, an element of freedom. (I am grateful for the humble stones and the willingness to so sacrifice their beauty for me.) This place inside my mind that I find as I paint my stones is a place where images and dialogues and even thoughts sometimes come to visit (and sometimes stay). They come and visit as if they were coming home – the way aunts and uncles and cousins and neighbors used to come to my grandfather’s house in Tampico when I was a child. They came to sit in the shade of mango and avocado trees and to feel the evening breeze of the gulf of Mexico and they stayed for the pleasure of being with each other.