Shelley has been showing us her jewels, err, minerals, and telling wonderful stories about them the last couple of days. I can't say that I've ever visited a weblog before, as I have with Shelley's mineral posts, and felt as if I were enjoying some completely new kind of medium. Better than a book, better than a blog, better than paper, better than digital, better than acrylic, better than even the experience of the photos featured there would be without the text surrounding and informing them.
In this post, and this one, it is like holding a book with my eyes. It is as close to physically touching a good book or a wonderful painting as I've gotten online, but even better than touching, because without the ability to touch the minerals or the photos of the minerals, I've literally been drinking them with my eyeballs.
Simply drinking. In the brilliance of color and text, I squirm and squint, then my eyes blink, then adjust, then they open wide and say, "ahhh."
Today I decided that from now on when someone asks me what shade of blue I like best, I will say, Shelley's Toxic Chalcanthite, and if someone asks me my favorite shade of red, I will reply, Shelley's Flawless Rhodochrosite.
These are the posts that keep me here. They are stories with layers, layers of stories, and you have to dig, use the hands of your brain and your eyes to take them in, like digging for minerals, each photo and story is a discovery. They are wrapped by writer and unwrapped by the reader alone. They are her gift to us.
Others can dine on politics and campaigns and law and tech. But you'll find me gladly partaking of some mineral water over at Shelley's place.
