I Took A Small Piece Home

More recently, I think every human is a collector. Either they know it or they don't. Either they want to or they don't. I've come to this conclusion by taking a closer look at... me.

Like any child or teenager, I too have collected various objects, influenced by friends and schoolmates, influenced by reading or TV shows or movies. As children, we have a great inclination to copy what others do.

I have collected postcards, stamps, boxes, coins, records, books, and magazines. Because even a library can be a collection...

After I got out of the period of life I wanted to get out of as soon as possible, i.e. the period of life when I had no responsibilities and worries, but I didn't know that... I didn't have time to think about collections and collecting.

I was also scared to see some collectors who were swallowed up by their collections, that is, collections that took up the collector's entire house so that they had no place to live. I didn't want to suffer the same fate.

And yet, we humans are made to collect things. From here to become a collector without knowing it is only a step. Which I did!

I'm glad I did it and can now tell you about my little collections. Now, about stones!

My stones

I find the stones in the alleys of a park, near a river, or in the mountains. I can also buy them from decoration and gardening shops, or building material stores.

No, that's not what it's about.

I collect stones from the sea. I collect them from the beaches where I spend my holidays.

I don't gather these stones to collect them. I love places by the sea so much that I want to have something from there close to me all the time.

More than that, these stones connect me from where I picked them. In this case, these stones are taken from a small beach in Pefkari, on the Greek island of Thassos.

Balchik stones

I like the sea very much. I can say that the sea has become a passion and almost an obsession. I live on the mainland, in Romania. Not near the sea. To see the sea I have to travel between 200km and up to 800km. It's 200km to the Black Sea from Romania, there are 300-400km to the Black Sea from Bulgaria, and 8oo km to Greece, the island of Thassos.

If I do a simple calculation I think I have been to the sea more than 50 times in this lifetime. Most often in Bulgaria, in Balchik.

Balchik is famous for its white stones and white limestone hills. It is also called the Silver City because of this.

The stones brought from Balchik are bigger.

Rocks that have been underwater for a long time, rocks that keep the traces of the shells that lived stuck to them.

I never thought of these stones as a collection. I brought them home to quench my longing for the sea during my long time away from it. Often the effect is the opposite, when I see the stones the longing for the sea increases!

The fish with a head of stone and a body of paper

Only at home, did I notice that a stone resembles a fish head. I showed the stone to my friends and they didn't see the resemblance...

I had to make a simple and tortured drawing that may help.

I combined the two elements. The stone that was shaped by the seawater and the drawing I made and that's how it came into the world The fish with a head of stone and a body of paper!

I picked these stones for another reason. I thought the time would come when I would no longer be able to go to the sea.
We live with this illusion that life flows uniformly and linearly and that we can be the same for a very long time, forgetting that the moment may come when everything will change.

I have this experience myself. When I traveled to Thassos for the first time, in 2017, I decided that we would go to this island every year to come. The year 2019 was the last time I was there. The pandemic came and that changed our plans, then different health and family problems, and here it is... I'm thinking of Thassos just touching the jar with stones collected from Pefkari Beach!

This little collection is very dear and useful to me. It forces me to think about my next trip to the sea.

At the entrance to the house, I made this little arrangement to remind me of the sea whenever I enter or leave the house.

These things help. I have already planned two trips to the sea in the first part of this year. In May and June. I count the days...