It’s probably worth investing some time in learning Geology. I keep surprising myself with the fact everything we use comes from the ground. It’s easy to forget this, because so much stuff goes through sophisticated processes of refinement and technology before it comes to us as a complete and packaged product.
Geology is fascinating, because it reveals a story, a story through time, of how the earth was formed. Abstracted, imagine each age laid down in these massive time-slabs – sometimes crushing debris and animals in their path, reducing them to mere pages. Sometimes these pages are then bent and buckled or scorched or cooled – how rapidly or slowly dictates the formation of different crystals and deposits. Then there is water, with its huge, awesome force, traversing this activity, ripping through the earth.
I keep thinking I wish I paid more attention to it at school, because I feel I know so little of it now. But I didn’t appreciate any of this at the time, and my geology teacher was not charismatic. It isn’t ever too late to learn, just time is not on my side.
The local coast is dramatic, often rocky, defined by semi-metamorphic rock, in some places jutting out of the sands and mudflats diagonally several metres high. The rocks of the cliff sides churn then slam down into the shore.
This particular sketch is a solitary upright slab. These sort of slabs are interesting in themselves. It makes me think of gravestones, and how we feel a need to mark a life. These slabs are in effect their own markers of a time and circumstance.