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• 1 2018-08-14T00:09:26+00:00 Igneous Ligneous Inosculations 27 plain 32 2019-02-11T01:11:16+00:00 “Igneous Ligneous Inosculations” evokes an embrace of stones and wood: igneous referring to rock formed of cooled magma; ligneous meaning composed of or related to wood; inosculation being the entwining of trees or branches together, from the Latin osculare, to provide with a mouth or outlet—inosculation is arboreal kissing. The pages on this path record Pierre Jardin's various experiments in forging relations between rocks and wood, from setting stones on stumps to planting rocks in trees. As he discovered, he wasn't the first to have this idea....
  
  Intimate relations between stone and wood occur through natural processes. Petrified wood is probably the best known example. This spectacular log in the Petrified Forest formed from a fallen tree buried in river sediment rich in silicon. This preserved the tree from decay, and then, as the silicon-rich water percolated through the log, the silicon combined with oxygen to form quartz crystals in the spaces in the tree tissues, forming permineralized fossils with minerals including amethyst, smoky quartz, rose quartz, and rock crystal quartz.
• 1 2018-08-04T22:48:51+00:00 Petrification 10 plain 2018-08-05T15:35:12+00:00 Pierre Jardin spends an inordinate amount of time with stones: collecting them, arranging them, photographing them, writing about them. If he had to choose one word to capture how he feels about stones, it would be absorbing.  Absorption encompasses both a material and aesthetic aspect: the taking in or soaking up of one energy or substance by another, usually gradually; and engrossing the attention.  
  
  Pierre Jardin is seldom seen in the Petriverse; when spotted, he is usually standing still, staring at stones. While he appears to be lost in thought, or absent-minded, something more mysterious, if not mystical, is occurring.  Jardin has spent so many hours absorbed by rocks, that he has begun absorbing stone himself.  
   
  Petrification occurs in organic material like wood, when the original pore spaces fill with minerals and become stony.  The process has never been observed in living humans and scientists remain sceptical about Jardin's reported transformation. 
    But in The Third Policeman, Irish author Flann O'Brien advanced the theory that "people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the inter-changing of the atoms of each of them."  
  
   
  
  
                     
  
  
  
  
  
  A similar molecular exchange may be occurring here. Jardin's fixed gaze induces a confusion psychologists call "boundary dissolution." Utterly engrossed in the textures, forms, and sheer beauty of stones, Jardin enters a "deep thought" state; when deep thought is immersed in the deep time of stones, a porous membrane between matter and mind forms. Through what Gaston Bachelard has termed "dialectical animism," stones and homo sapiens seem to actually seep into and absorb each other.
  
  Judging from a recent petric text message (left), Jardin is unfazed by this osmosis-diagnosis. Slowly turning to stone over six years has brought peace to Pierre Jardin. Visitors who linger mindfully over displays should be mindful of peacefulness or other petrification symptoms contracted by stone-staring.