Diary of a Rock Balancer ::
Stone Balance Art created and photographed by Michael Grab — 29 January 2019 — California, USA ::
On A Whim . . .
At the beginning of 2019, I decided to relocate to California for the time being. I’m currently staying close to the coast along a fairly remote stretch of highway 1 in Mendocino County. A few noticeable changes: I traded the busy, colorado front-range traffic, for a relatively quiet redwood forest and quiet narrow roads. the wifi connection and phone signals are not as reliable here, but I welcome the change. It does a wonderful job of tuning my mind into here and now, and relatively out of social media.
I’ve locked myself away in a local studio, editing the new version of my annual film series featuring the recent year’s work — until now, i guess. editing is still underway with intent to finish by March.
Tuning In . . .
Anyway, things felt right, so I pried myself away from editing to “get out in the world” and visit a local beach i keep hearing about. It’s a new place; new climate; new wind patterns, new animals, and I reckon the Pacific ocean deserves utmost awareness and respect. No expectations — just go. And the process of going and doing often spirals into something i highly enjoy.
I walked around the beach for some time and despite the overcast afternoon, tracked the sun position for sunset, cuz.. why not..? I ended up settling here; where this creek flows out to the ocean; triangulated by wind, sun, local terrain and focused intent. Here, It happened to be the case that the slope of the hill and path of the setting sun (today), had a near perfect alignment from this view. So I began imagining potentials, and weaving the variables into one.
Several hours passed before i finally settled on this sequence of rocks. There are 2 builds included here. It fell once from wind, somewhere between the first picture and the rest. . .
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“Magicians who do tricks are experts at fooling their audiences. They manipulate their expectations. But the magic that we do in everyday life goes un-noticed. We have become so used-to-it that we’ve lost what we had as children; that air that everything is magical and we are magicians. The magic that we do can be with or without conscious expectation. The thing about expectation is that presence identifies it only as a possibility that may or not manifest. When it doesn’t it is usually a disappointment because expectation is always an illusion, a condition of hope without presence. The point is that expectation cannot exist in presence. However, expectation is a powerful tool of the imagination when consciously determined to manifest a focused image. This is conscious magic, real magic where one masters “expectation”. It is a property of our imagination too often disregarded because we lack self love or do not value ourselves. The condition of self loving harmonizes and resinates with the mystery, with the divine. We are here to discover our presence to re-enter our magical and miraculous life of endless possibilities.” ~ unknown