Before I start on the ramble through the highlights, a dignified and slightly scornful nod to Valentines day!
Thought this was pretty sweet, only $15 too, I almost bought it as a valentine to myself. It has hearts and everything. The Chinese bring in an incredible amount of stuff…the most impressive flourite and stibnite specimens you will ever see…none of the really good stuff was out in the sunlight and good pics were hard, but here’s one of stibnite and calcite
This is the beautiful. They also bring the sublime, but even buddha ceases to be quite so sublime when heads are piled up and scattered on the gravel…photogenic though.
And from the sublime you just go to the ridiculous, piled up and scattered on tables.
Happy valentines once again! All the love, money and luck you’ll ever need. And they have the future covered as well…if you haven’t gone blind after purchasing one of the above
I see a couple of dark strangers in your future. One of them looks uncommonly like my father. If you don’t catch him on one of his cranky days, that’s generally a pretty good thing. Just don’t feel obliged to answer any overly personal questions…
The Tibetans are here too, via Nepal and India since the Chinese invaded their country and stayed there.
The weather has been lovely here, if a trifle cold. But sunshine and blue skies make a nice change from the pouring rain of the past couple of years,
So back to one of my favourite things, ammonites! From Morroco, they are incredible. I’d buy one of these after my ammolite, these are also several feet across.
And from the Democratic Republic of Congo
I have loved malachite ever since I was little, it is such an incredible stone, circled and swirled and bubbled and every shade of my favourite green. And I love it most smooth and polished I think, I wouldn’t say that of most stones and I have seen a natural specimen or two that made me catch my breath, but when they combine both…I’m smitten. I remember the first time I saw malachite, I was very small. And loved it most, right away. This is one of the many forms it can take
I took this last year. Maybe one day I’ll just write an ode to malachite…though there a couple of other stones that deserve such a thing. And they would probably be profoundly uninteresting.
From…Montana? Texas?
Buffalo skulls…I don’t know why I love things in rows and stacks, but so I do. I also like skulls. But not as much as fossils. When faced with so much that is amazing, unique, and extraordinary, it really makes you analyze what you like best. But I think I’ll write about that tomorrow.
From India, near Mumbai
Cavansite, it forms these extraordinary little balls of intense blue green, I like this stuff too. The light isn’t the best though. And something we’ve never seen before (rare!)
Okenite. These incredible puffs of tiny crystals, formed in bubbles in basalt (basically magma). They’re building all of these roads near Mumbai, in a thing called the Deccan trap…basically a crap ton of red…hot…magma just poured out of the earth, and kept pouring and kept pouring, stretching miles upon miles across and up to a mile thick in places. And now they’re building roads through it and finding this stuff (though probably blasting most of it into oblivion). My dad bought a smaller piece, and promised that I’ll get it when he’s dead. He’s very cheery.
And the crowds were up a bit more, the news from vendors was better. And another year is finished. Tomorrow…the splendours of the things so magical I bought them.
