There’s a string that moves to the center of the earth, gravity found — a long running spin of whirling energy. Winds know it. Trees sense it. Waters flow to it. Organisms abide by it. Storms, the spinning whorl of energy, tornados, hurricanes, the casting of the whirled field — it’s all there, galaxy-like in form. The whorl, world. And finding that delicate symmetry, it’s about this — balance.
Learning how to sense the line of energy that runs from the tip of your fingers to the center of the world, that runs out above you to the skies above, even the harmony and the spinning of the tides. And the energy that flows through us. We stand, we fall — we are born, we age, we turn to the earth. We return to the earth. Making that stacking, that strung fluency is about that — realizing impermanence, finding beauty in a moment, sensing the arrangement of things that reach from deep inside that orb which we act upon — and that we build from.
I look back. I look in. I seek the etymon.
What, to the cairn (kairn) noun
A heap of stones set up as a landmark or a memorial.
[From Scottish Gaelic carn (pile of stones).]1535, from Scottish carne, from Gael. carn “heap of stones, rocky hill,” akin to Gaul. karnon “horn,” from PIE base *ker-n– “highest part of the body, horn,” thus “tip, peak”
And there’s more, to horn:
O.E. horn “horn of an animal,” also “wind instrument” (originally made from animal horns), from P.Gmc. *khurnaz (cf. Ger. Horn, Du. horen, Goth. haurn), from PIE *ker– “uppermost part of the body, head, horn, top, summit” (cf. Gk. karnon, L. cornu, Skt. srngam “horn”).
Visual Thesaurus: http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=cairn
What’s the meaning then? For me, it’s this — something that comes up, rests above, comes above that can been seen, from afar. The cairn is a horn that reaches above the horizon of what lies at the curve of things of that which is perceived.
Seeing that, reaching out, that balance does that — it reaches above, in a line high into the sky, far into…
the heart of things.
And the heart of you — the balancer.
tsg