Crystal Unpersuasion

This is an entry in the Round Robin Photo Challenge.  The subject this time, as suggested by Steven of (sometimes)photoblog, is "crystal."  So I've gathered up most of the crystals in the house to show you.

Quick quiz for those of you who know me:  which of the rocks and related items in the following picture did I NOT inherit from my Mom?  (Hint:  there's only one item here that I originally bought for myself.)




Despite my mom's borderline Catholicism, she was a bit of a New Ager.  She went to Esalen several times in the late 1960s and early 1970s, learned biofeedback and meditation, and used Gestalt and Transactional Analysis in her practice as a psychologist.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it shows she had a nontraditional, in some cases spiritual approach to the things that interested her. She never said so outright, but I think she even used marijuana a few times.




So by the early 1990s she was interested in crystals and harmonic convergences and vortexes and stuff like that.  I don't want to insult anyone out in AOL J-Land who believes in such things, but I think it's pretty silly myself.  But I did take my mom to Sedona, home of a reputed vortex, red rock mesas and Pink Jeep tours.  I even bought her a crystal there.  I don't  know whether it's one of the ones shown here or not.  These are the only crystals I found in the fruitcake tin with the cheap beads, loose change and eyeglasses screwdriver.



Sedona isn't the only source  of these items.  Mom may have gotten her favorite crystal from a friend in Florida, and I bought these two crystal balls for her in Tucson.  One of the big tourist draws here every winter is the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show.  It fills up every hotel and pretty much every exhibition hall in town, plus tents and roadside tables.  One year I bought the bigger of these balls from a vendor on the I-10 frontage road.  The next year, I got the smaller one in pretty much the same place.  Neither one is perfect; there's discoloration and a little bit of cracking damage on each of them.  They're also quite small.  I doubt that my mom ever attempted a "reading" with either of these, but I'm sure she knew I meant well.

    

My mom's favorite crystal was probably this one.  This is almost certainly the one in which she claimed to see "My Lady."  I'm not quite sure whether she meant the Virgin Mary, but I think so.  If I work at it, I can sorta kinda see a female figure there, but I'll be very surprised if you can, based on these pictures.

   




Since I couldn't get anything terribly interesting out of the stone itself, I decided to mess around with PhotoStudio 2000 a bit, and give this crystal its own vortex.  I hope you like the result!



The same crystal is shown here, along with the sort-of-rose colored one, the purple geode thingy and a little geode I think I got at the gift shop that used to be inside the dinosaur in Cabezon, California.  That's right.  The geode in the foreground at left is the only one of these I bought for myself.  I also have a ruby ring that came down from my grandmother, but honestly, I don't like it much.  I kind of like opals, but my opal ring doesn't fit and I'm not sure where it is.  And I'm  not sure I own any diamonds at all--not that I care.

But I like quartz.  I used to find bits of quartz in Snook's Pond in Fayetteville, NY, and I always thought it was kind of pretty.  In my Mâvarin books, necklaces strung with quartz play an important role as a plot point.  I also like a few other semiprecious stones, but I have no idea whether any of them qualify as crystals.  And frankly, I don't care.  All I know about crystals is that they are a particular form a mineral can take, when conditions cause it to assume a certain structure.  Oh, and they tend to be clearer than the normal mineral, and maybe faceted, and perhaps refract light.  But I don't care.  Sorry.  What do you want from someone who got a D in Chemistry?

Kind of makes for interesting pictures, though.

Karen.

Now go see the other Round Robin entries, which should be posted between midnight Tuesday night and midnight Wednesday night (in other words, on June 8th).  Updated as of Tuesday 6/14 at 6:28 PM MST:

Carly  (OndineMonet) - Ellipsis   - posted!

Duane (fdtate714) - sotto voce   - posted!

Steven (sepintx) - (sometimes)photoblog   - posted!

Betty (rap4143) - My Day, My Interests   - posted!

Amy/Sharky (babyshark28) substance; or lack of - posted! (note corrected link)

Mary (alphawoman1) Alphawoman's blog  - probably sitting this one out due to moving and such

Dawn (AuburnDawn) - Dawn's Drivel   - posted!

Kat (mskatdabrat) From Every Angle - posted!

Robbie (krobbie67) Robbie's Ruminations  - posted!

Michael (madmanadhd) Confessions of a Madman...    - taking a rain check this time

Monica (photographybymon) Mamarazzi   - posted!

Patrick (pattboy92) A Stop at Willoughby  - posted!

Aunt Nub (montaukny) - Aunt Nub's Empty Head   - posted!

Alan (botdotdotdot) - F-Stop   - posted!

Coy (coy1234787 - Dancing in the Rain   - posted!

Becky Yanagi (ryanagi - Where Life Takes You   - posted!

Celeste (csandhollow) My Day and Thoughts - posted!

Tess (tc01hm) - First Digital Photos   - posted!

Derek (deveil) - Picture of the Day - NEW!

Gypsy (wildwickedgypsy) - GypsysJourney - NEW!

EB (benu4444) Creativity - Bits and Pieces - NEW link!

If you'd like to join in, but  haven't given us a head's-up, you're still welcome to post your own "Crystal" photos. Just post the link to your journal in comments to Steven's blog entry, or email it to me.  We'll do our best to get the word out, so people can come see what you did.  

Have fun!