Stonehenge is awesome
Aug. 31st, 2010 07:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI went to Stonehenge just before sunrise and sat and meditated for half an hour and spent the other half walking around the circle. There's no touching the stones but I traced the shape of them with my hands a couple inches out from the stone. Is more interesting that way. Also I had my sonic screwdriver with me so I could scan them all more closely.
My camera is a cheap thing I bought basically because it costs less that taxi home from Norwich so I don't mind carrying or losing it. The pictures look okay small but terrible full size. I don't mind, I didn't go there to make pictures with a camera, I went to look at things and know them.
Stonehenge is awesome. It's so huge and solid and the stone feels kind of like boulders or cliffs in a suit, like they decided to get a bit fancy for fun. It feels like natural, it's so old, but humans MADE it. Someone just up and decided 'hey, you know what would be good? REALLY BIG ROCKS! None of our friends have rocks this big.' And then they got a bunch of people together to also believe that idea. And move rocks from Wales. And make them stand up with more really big rocks on top. It was the space race of its day, basically, this huge effort that humans got together and decided was really important. That's what I felt sitting there, that you could trace a line from this ancient place right up to humans going to the moon, and off to the stars, because humans do these huge ridiculous brilliant things.
And there's this other line that goes up to Doctor Who at Stonehenge, because we do these things, and then we make up stories and try to understand them, or we wind our story in with the already cool ones, and it must have been stories that got people moving those rocks in the first place, whatever it was they told themselves that made it that important. We do these wonderous monumental purely weird things and then we tell each other about them until they make sense to us. How cool is that?
So sitting in the middle of Stonehenge you understand it as an elemental place, as earth and stone and sky together, but also as this totally human place, that we made and kept on making, making our mark on. And the landscape beyond it shows how that just keeps going, the roads rolling past and the hay bales and the trees and the caravans. There's a plan to hide everything so there's just empty grass around it, call it unspoiled or restored or something, but I think that's missing something. It's not a stopped still place that once happened, it's part of Things Humans Do, part of how we shape the land. Roads are a right part of that.
To go in among the stones you have to promise not to touch or stand on the stones or burn things or drop things or play amplified music or bring food or drink or a whole bunch of other stuff. Not supposed to mark it any extra. The thousands of years take enough bits away, tourists shouldn't. So you just go in and take pictures and be there. You have to book it months in advance, and it happens at sunrise and sunset sort of times, not the main opening hours. Apparently every day there's lots of people that just don't turn up, that booked and paid and yet decide on the day it wasn't that important. I think they're really missing out. Stonehenge isn't supposed to be a dramatic silhouette or something you just look at from behind the fences. You stand inside it and it frames the world, shapes it, shapes the wind and weather around it. It's not just for looking at, it's for being in.
But the people looking after that now have to balance that against it still being there in another couple thousand years. I guess waiting lists and payment in advance is a working way to do that.
So there were a couple dozen people in the circle, mostly taking pictures a lot, and then there was me, sitting in the middle, meditating. And sometimes zapping things with a sonic screwdriver.
8-)
My camera is a cheap thing I bought basically because it costs less that taxi home from Norwich so I don't mind carrying or losing it. The pictures look okay small but terrible full size. I don't mind, I didn't go there to make pictures with a camera, I went to look at things and know them.
Stonehenge is awesome. It's so huge and solid and the stone feels kind of like boulders or cliffs in a suit, like they decided to get a bit fancy for fun. It feels like natural, it's so old, but humans MADE it. Someone just up and decided 'hey, you know what would be good? REALLY BIG ROCKS! None of our friends have rocks this big.' And then they got a bunch of people together to also believe that idea. And move rocks from Wales. And make them stand up with more really big rocks on top. It was the space race of its day, basically, this huge effort that humans got together and decided was really important. That's what I felt sitting there, that you could trace a line from this ancient place right up to humans going to the moon, and off to the stars, because humans do these huge ridiculous brilliant things.
And there's this other line that goes up to Doctor Who at Stonehenge, because we do these things, and then we make up stories and try to understand them, or we wind our story in with the already cool ones, and it must have been stories that got people moving those rocks in the first place, whatever it was they told themselves that made it that important. We do these wonderous monumental purely weird things and then we tell each other about them until they make sense to us. How cool is that?
So sitting in the middle of Stonehenge you understand it as an elemental place, as earth and stone and sky together, but also as this totally human place, that we made and kept on making, making our mark on. And the landscape beyond it shows how that just keeps going, the roads rolling past and the hay bales and the trees and the caravans. There's a plan to hide everything so there's just empty grass around it, call it unspoiled or restored or something, but I think that's missing something. It's not a stopped still place that once happened, it's part of Things Humans Do, part of how we shape the land. Roads are a right part of that.
To go in among the stones you have to promise not to touch or stand on the stones or burn things or drop things or play amplified music or bring food or drink or a whole bunch of other stuff. Not supposed to mark it any extra. The thousands of years take enough bits away, tourists shouldn't. So you just go in and take pictures and be there. You have to book it months in advance, and it happens at sunrise and sunset sort of times, not the main opening hours. Apparently every day there's lots of people that just don't turn up, that booked and paid and yet decide on the day it wasn't that important. I think they're really missing out. Stonehenge isn't supposed to be a dramatic silhouette or something you just look at from behind the fences. You stand inside it and it frames the world, shapes it, shapes the wind and weather around it. It's not just for looking at, it's for being in.
But the people looking after that now have to balance that against it still being there in another couple thousand years. I guess waiting lists and payment in advance is a working way to do that.
So there were a couple dozen people in the circle, mostly taking pictures a lot, and then there was me, sitting in the middle, meditating. And sometimes zapping things with a sonic screwdriver.
8-)
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no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 11:41 pm (UTC)So glad I get to hear about it, even from far-afar.
Also, I like your observations about humans and stories.
~ c.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-01 03:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 06:21 pm (UTC)This is particularly neat:
no subject
Date: 2010-09-01 08:41 pm (UTC)