But I, unfortunately, am not talking about rock and roll music. I am talking about rocks. Stones. Boulders. Pebbles. In short: Rocks.
All over Durham -- more than any town I've ever been in, and by a wide wide margin -- there are rocks just lying around. Big rocks, little rocks. Just rocks. All over the place. Take a look at the photo above? See that one to the left of the strip mine masquerading as a road? That thing was just sitting in the middle of the road a good several inches larger than my fist. It was a big damn rock.
And that's just the beginning -- does Durham have some bizarre magnetic force that draws meteorites to our fair burgh?
I mean, we're not living out in the woods, right? This is a fairly good-sized city, and it's just covered with rocks. Aren't there machines that like sweep up the roads or something? Do we not have those around here?
Here's another of Durham's fine rocks -- granted this one was on the side of the road -- but it definitely still had the stink of asphalt on it:
And this one too -- those are DHTWRITW's chief photographer Violet Rumble's boots to give some perspective:
I mean, where, exactly, are these rocks coming from?
happy travels,
Ken
7 comments:
those are armadillos, ken. if you would just wait a few minutes theyd uncurl for you.
Well, damn, somebody's got to start shooting those things before they take over -- know what I'm saying?
h.t,
Ken
The amazing thing about that storm drain photo is that it has a gorgeous "storm light" quality to the image. Keep up the great photography on this most important blog.
PS: I agree with what you said about my band.
Thanks, Maria, will do -- Violet takes a lot of the pictures, so I'll pass along the compliments.
And I think I'll be at your all's Pinhook show, btw....
h.t,
Ken
Dear Mr. Rumble,
I assume you pose the question of "where, exactly, are these rocks coming from?" entirely in it's most metaphoric sense. A man of your apparent intelligence surely knows the answer to such a question. However, as the Internet in general and sites such as yours have become the defacto historical record and repository of all statistically correlated knowledge, I feel an imperative to make a declaration to the following effect. Rocks grow by rubbing up against other rocks and accreting the concomitant dust to themselves. Thus, small rocks grew proportionally smaller and large rocks get increasingly larger. Durham, ostensibly, has a population of rocks of such an aggressive nature that they are expanding at a rapid (geologically speaking) rate, one you seem to have identified. Keep up the good work.
Yours in science,
x
Mr. French,
While I share your savvy conclusions about the rarely spoken of dust-lives of rocks, I must differ with your assertion that I mean my question metaphorically. I, indeed, mean it quite literally. I understand the origins of rocks; I do not, however, understand /where/ these rocks come from? How often, good sir, do you--whilst walking amongst the fair hills of far Seattle, see an enormous rock on the side of the road? Not a decorative rock set at a jaunty angle in someone's garden; not an imposing rock plunked in front of some driveway screaming with its rocky visage: "Sir, do not pass!" I mean a /rock/. Just a rock. Not a pretty rock. Not an interesting rock. A rock that, frankly, has absolutely /no/ cause to be cluttering the bi-ways of my fair metropolis. I have, many times, been to New York City -- a city well known for its extraordinary and unusual--often, even, unique--occurrences and contents, and in all that time in New York City, I have /never/ seen such a conglomeration of rocks as I see on a /daily/ basis here in sleepy Durham, North Carolina.
So I ask you, and anyone with the strength to take up this question, /where/ are these rocks coming from??
h.t,
Ken
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