Rocks in my Head

I am missing a piece of malachite. A few years ago I bought two pieces of hematite and two of malachite from a science and surplus store. I was working in a rather sterile environment, and I thought that the shiny silver and swirly green would add some positive energy to my standard issue desk (I had just read a book on feng sui, and these rocks made perfect feng sui-y sense but I no longer remember why). So when I quit the job, I brought the stones home and placed them on a window sill. One piece of malachite fell to the floor while I was watering a philodendron, and it is well and truly gone--presumably to that place where all inextricably lost things go. Oh, well.

When F. was little, he was obsessed with rocks. He spent hours searching for them on beaches and roadsides. When I was heading to San Francisco for an anthropology conference, he asked me to bring some back for him. Well, time was an issue, and as I didn't find any likely specimens on the sidewalk, I ducked into a funky store to see if, maybe, they were selling a bag of local stones. (It could happen!) No luck. I asked the clerk--a young guy, probably around 20 or so--if he knew where I could go to find some rocks for my son, who wanted rocks, and only rocks, from San Francisco. In a lovely surfer drawl, he answered "Wow, far out. How about [such-and-such] Beach? That's where I go to get all my rocks."

It was a perfect California moment. I fell in love with the place right then and there. In fact, if I weren't from Vermont, I'd want to be from California. "That's where I go to get all my rocks." Beautiful.