Back in 2017 having been invited to Ireland to speak at the annual Féile-na-gCloch dry stone festival, on the island of Inisoirr, the universe had already arranged it that I would forget to bring my power adaptor for my laptop, thus leaving me with no way to show my photos of what I cleverly had planned to talk about that Sunday morning, September 17.
Little did I know how momentous an occasion it was going to be. After I stopped scrambling to find someone, somewhere, on the island with the electronic solution I so desperately thought I needed, I realized I just 'needed' to start to trusting the universe.
The island may not have had any laptop adaptors lying around anywhere on the beach for me to be able to show photos of stone walls, but it did have plenty of stones.
And so it was, I came up with a plan, and requested before hand, that people coming to hear my talk, each bring a stone with them, and be prepared to have me talk about each one, and hopefully, together, laying each one on the table I was presenting from, make something with them.
As each person in the audience came to front with their 'special' stone, it started to become apparent that something very magical was taking place. It was confirmed, after hearing so many people afterwards, that the resulting talk was a little short of a miracle.
The first person to come up to the front was my friend Eddy Farrelly, an accomplished dry stone waller and lime mortar expert. He began telling me about why he chose his particular stone.
As he explained that his stone had been 'talking' to him, and that it told him it 'wanted' to be in a wall, I explained to the audience that I had been thinking things weren't going to get so spooky, so early in the talk.
In the photo above, which I saw later, I see the lamp from the projector, (that was unable to show photos from my dead laptop) is by contrast, dramatically illuminating his talking stone in a strange iridescent blue, which in retrospect, really was quite fitting. The magic had already began to happen.
To be continued. . .
