Geologist

by Ralph Pite

Rocks are formed in inhospitable, secret places, at extremes of 
     temperature and pressure, and although they can be classified, no 
     two rocks are exactly the same. They carry the trace of the 
     particular conditions in which they were made – conditions that can 
     never be reproduced exactly. Hence the geologist is less an 
     experimental scientist than a connoisseur of the inexhaustibly 
     various – an archivist of residues.

This kind of research asks for someone who is observant and passive, by 
     temperament a fatalist who believes we neither escape nor change 
     but only wear away. He or she will probably find compassion easier 
     than intervention.

Yet geology bears witness to gigantic forces and the metamorphoses they 
     bring about: ferns to coal, seashells to limestone, limestone to 
     marble, coal to diamond. The subject is haunted by these signs of 
     possibility – by the ubiquity of the signs, by the remoteness and the 
     cost of the alteration they bear witness to.

He or she is among relics, reconstructing miracles.