Ty's essay

Ty LeVarge
Mr. Salsich
English 02
May 13, 2009

The Stones of Time:
An Essay on a Garden Stone, Two Poems, and My Life

(1) What if transformation happened every day? (2) Believe it or not, transformation is always happening. (3) All objects are undergoing mutations and transformations every minute. (4)Everything we see is undergoing a transformation.

TS The garden stone is very similar to the poems written by the German Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. SD The garden stone is a stone that is weak on its own, but undergoes a transformation. CM Alone, the stone is just a slab of rock in a crazy shape. CM However, when placed in a stone walkway, it becomes part of something beautiful. SD Also, the garden stone has the smoothness and has left history of who stepped there like how like Rilke describes in one of his poems. CM He says, “but the courageous morning melody that hovers and shimmers behind their fading steps” and that seeing, leaves a record in your mind of what you saw and what it did. CM The garden stone keeps the dirt and the weight that was beared (FAST) upon it. CS Everything in life leaves behind a footprint; figurative, or literal, and that footprint is always remembered by every speck of dirt and every inanimate object that that object has left upon the stone.

TS The stone is very similar to my life in one, very specific way; I have transformed as the stone can. SD Like the stone, I was once an individual that was separate from the rest. CM Five years ago, I was a separate unit, alone, helpless, vague. CM The stone is similar because it was new to its environment and was lost. SD Now, in the present time, the stone and I, have changed. CM The stone is now part of an elegant garden and serves as a piece of one walkway. CM This year, we have all become closer as one and I am now part of that walkway making its way from point A to point B. CS All objects, living, and inanimate, can change drastically over a short period of time.

TS Similarly, In both of his poems, Rilke makes many interesting points and ideas. SD One that stuck out to me, is transformation. CM In his first poem he states, "… life is transformation: all that is good is transformation and all that is bad as well" and he means that every event is a change in someone's life. CM Changes always affect someone spiritually and may change the way they think. SD I also like the statement he makes in the second poem. CM He says, "out of whose depths their dearest secrets speak" He seems to be telling that within everything, is a secret that was kept away for a long time. CM After a long time, that those secrets are revealed to all around it. CS Strange how all of life's mysteries revolve around the simplest actions.

(1) We see transformation. (2) We reveal secrets. (3) All happen sometime in our lifetime. (4) We have no power to alter it because only ourselvees can control the transformation, and transfromation is the most powerful