Going to the Tucson Gem Show…Or Not – March/Apr 2008

Ed. Note: This story was brought to us by Ken Barnes. He is a member of a subscription, stone blog called: aboutstone.org. Members, including Bill Knight, exchange their thoughts on stone and, occasionally, stories like this one surface.

When Bill’s friend Nick said that he should go to the Tucson Gem Show, Bill initially replied that he would wait to go until after he died. Nick and others said, “Go now Bill.” Here is Bill Knight’s response.

Nick suggested that it might be best to arrange a visit while still among the living, but you know how it is at shows like that. It’s the last day, nobody wants to carry their stock back home, the deals are getting crazy and you find yourself being offered a great deal on a small, exquisite lapis lazuli boulder, which even though it’s a great price, is still way out of your comfort zone.

But you’ve come all this way, and consider the fact that you’re here already. Any enterprising person you might imagine, if only you could think, would surely capitalize on such a ready discount. Wouldn’t they? Are you no sort of businessperson at all? Have you no ambition?

In your more sober moments you know perfectly well you’re not, and that in general you don’t, but are you able to speak truth to yourself when the stone’s talk is all flattery, when it is the color of a bluebird, when there is nothing keeping you from it but the sheer fabric of your lips pressed against the “yes” that is rising in your throat? When you can’t see yourself having any kind of future if it doesn’t have this stone in it? You’ve never had the chance to try a material like this. Think of what it could do for your hopeless career, your tired imagination, the clichés of your past. A stone like this could announce a new age of understanding; your unraveling personal history might be unified into a single gesture written in that forgiving, fluorescent blue. No, not just your own story. The story of the world!

MELTDOWN!

Best to stay home with your family and the stones you know, and who know you. That lapis is a midnight cowboy, a high dollar hustler. And you’re no Howard Hughes. There’ll be time enough for rock shows when you’re dead.

Oh my god.  Look!  It’s brecciated chalcedony. What a hunk!