Touchstones #1

Welcome to my blog! Whether you are here through curiosity or through mere chance I thank you for taking the time to open up this page up and discover what is written within.

I’ve always loved writing, whether in the form of poetry, prose, song or indeed a blog. For me writing is a grounding process, it helps me reconcile ideas, to gain insights into my own psyche and to put my thoughts into order, while at the same time it creates a sense of openness, of discovering something new and generates a harmonious feeling of expansiveness. I wanted the title of my blog to reflect these notions but of course I need it to be a little more concise. This is where i happened upon the concept of the touchstone which the dictionary describes as:

a fundamental or quintessential part or feature; as a test or criterion for determining the quality or genuineness of a thing.

Now, I’m no scholar but as the Ben Folds song goes; “I’ve got my philosophy” and I (like you) have been putting it together my whole life. So with each blog I’ll try to create a touchstone, a marker, I’ll be testing the genuineness of my ideas, my creativity and my experience, I’ll be looking for the salient or beautiful aspects in the everyday and attempt to identify and elucidate what is important.

I think of touchstones like coastal rocks eroded by the sea and smoothed by the weather and as time cycles on, as the ebb and the flow of the tide does its ritual moondance, the touchstones remain unmoved, quintessential and stoic.

At first glance these rocks also appear to be completely unchanging, but if you can zoom out far enough, if you can see them through the seasons and the years then you may become aware that even the most solid things are in fact always changing. If you do happen to notice this, it is then that you might just see that the coastal rock does not stand as it first seemed; against the waves and the weather, but rather it stands as one with them.

-kp