Rocks

Walking back and forth to my hooch everyday I like to step off the brittle concrete they pour here for roads and sidewalks and kick around in the dust and gravel. I look for rocks. We are in an oxbow of the Tigris where I am so there are all manner of good, rocks, smoothed and rounded by millennia of running water. Some I find that have a good shiny surface that will look good when polished. These rocks are green, blood red, brown, and opaque. Others are smooth and thin and I carry them in my pocket to rub on, like a stress reliever. Once in the nursery I used to work at an old lady used to come in occasionally and by lambs ear, it’s a perrinial with very thick, velvety leaves. She said she took them to her friends at the nursing home…rubbing the leaves had a soothing effect. I don’t know. I rub rocks.
A few weeks ago I found a what I thought was a rock embedded in some fossilized coral. I took it in for Harold, my state department friend and a resident rock expert to look at it. Before Harold could see it Duane, the contracting guy who has some interest in rocks, said “What you’ve found is a rock with calcified crap all over it. Did you find this under somebody’s toilet?” My hands felt suddenly, foul. But then Harold looked at it with great interest.
“What you have found my friend is a tooth. It looks like the canine of a saber tooth cat or maybe a camel. Very interesting.”
So yesterday I walked around kicking rocks on a break from my office and found another, larger “tooth”. I found another, flat rock with the same calcification under it, maybe it’s a molar. I should it to Jana who was out having a cigarette break.
“Billy, tell Harold he’s full of shit. That’s a rock with some coral on it.”
I don’t know what they are but they are interesting rocks.

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You might wonder if I don’t have more important things to think about than rocks. But I learned a long time ago that rocks are cool because having an interest in them doesn’t cost anything. Now I know they also give focus in a place where focus is easy to loose.