Most people think diamonds are rare and expensive. Droplets of pure carbon scattered about the mantle like toffee chips in a cake. Of elemental designs carbon’s is the most pure and symmetrical, a mathematical, engineer’s design. You can make damn near anything out of carbon, and somebody did. It’s in many forms, the black carbon of pencils and coal, of sticky bog-formed peat and dark thick crude oil. Plants and animals and spinning rocks in space, all made of carbon. And sometimes the earth squeezes it and by a quirk of molecular alignment it becomes hard and transparent and sharp at the edges and worth digging for. But it’s not rare and neither are diamonds. And they’re only expensive if you want a pretty one, wrapped in folded paper like contraband to be examined and turned under north-facing light, touched to the tip of the tongue to test purity, and passed down the chain of secrecy and ancient arrangements until it re-emerges set in gold as though it was born that way. Those diamonds are expensive because they have to be to justify their existence.
I have a saw blade I use for cutting brick. It is coated in diamond dust. I have a diamond encrusted cord which is used for cutting tile, it glitters in the sun as fetchingly as any necklace. Surely I must be wealthy and foolish to waste diamonds, even their dust, on such practical applications. But these are just normal diamonds, carbon diamonds, elemental and common and spread through the mantle like toffee chips in a cake. They are not secret diamonds, mined under armed guard to be whisked away, to be examined and breathed on and distributed cautiously by black velvet deacons. Mystique is a poor word for it for there is no mystery except the propensity for humans to deny their own light by holding something symbolic above themselves. Something un-attainable yet of their own creation. We are not happy if we do not want something, yet we want the wanting to end. And still, when we have everything we wanted, we want more. And if there is no more, we create something more to want.
My wedding ring is made of silver, not gold, because it is a symbol and would be just as valid if it were drawn on paper. It simply represents an idea and an understanding which are made of more intangible elements. But I use gold connectors on my electrical equipment for it does not corrode and if you want to cut tile, you can get a diamond cord saw for about 12 bucks down at the hardware store.
I have a saw blade I use for cutting brick. It is coated in diamond dust. I have a diamond encrusted cord which is used for cutting tile, it glitters in the sun as fetchingly as any necklace. Surely I must be wealthy and foolish to waste diamonds, even their dust, on such practical applications. But these are just normal diamonds, carbon diamonds, elemental and common and spread through the mantle like toffee chips in a cake. They are not secret diamonds, mined under armed guard to be whisked away, to be examined and breathed on and distributed cautiously by black velvet deacons. Mystique is a poor word for it for there is no mystery except the propensity for humans to deny their own light by holding something symbolic above themselves. Something un-attainable yet of their own creation. We are not happy if we do not want something, yet we want the wanting to end. And still, when we have everything we wanted, we want more. And if there is no more, we create something more to want.
My wedding ring is made of silver, not gold, because it is a symbol and would be just as valid if it were drawn on paper. It simply represents an idea and an understanding which are made of more intangible elements. But I use gold connectors on my electrical equipment for it does not corrode and if you want to cut tile, you can get a diamond cord saw for about 12 bucks down at the hardware store.
2 comments:
Love is a verb, not carbon.
Wearing big stones one one's fingers is merely an advertisement for someone else to come cut them off.
I have pretty rubies that I mined myself in Mexico. They'll never be set in gold and they'll never be worn to dinner in a dress that costs more than my annual salary. But I dug those suckers out of the earth with my own two hands, and that makes them pretty fucking special.
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