Hi everyone! I’m going to do my first blog post about an object (rather, a set of objects) that I didn’t bring to our first class. Pictured above are my Positive/Negative rocks, which hold a lot of sentimental value to me although they were only given to me fairly recently.

Each rock is about an inch and a half long and very smooth. While they are chipped in a few places, the Mediterranean Ocean rid them of all of their rough patches, so even the places that are chipped have rounded edges. The white is my Positive rock and the black is my Negative rock. My Positive rock is slightly smaller and flatter than my Negative rock and curves inward on both sides, which makes it feel as if someone else had already been rubbing it between their fingers long before it came to me. My Negative rock is rounded on one side and flat on the bottom, generally larger than the other rock, and so feels heavier when you hold in it your hand. I regularly rub oil into both rocks, which keeps them smooth and makes them smell like jasmine. The smell is particularly important for me because it reminds me of my best friend Lauren, who gave me the rocks, because she was the first person to put jasmine oil on them while we were in France.

The first time I saw a pair of Positive/Negative rocks, I was in Lauren’s room in Montpellier, France. She has a pair that she found on the beach in Barcelona, Spain, a long time ago, and I asked her what they were for. She explained to me that she uses these rocks to meditate: whenever she’s feeling very negative, she meditates over the black rock, channeling all of her feelings into it so she can keep an open mind throughout the day. Contrastingly, whenever she’s feeling positive, she’s gives a little energy to the white rock to save for a rainy day; this way, when she’s feeling down, she can draw some good energy from her Positive rock after she channels her negativity into the black rock.

I was really interested in these rocks and spent a lot of time asking her if they really worked. I hunted for a pair a couple times at a beach near our city called Palavas les Flots, but I never found any good ones. All of mine were different shapes, sizes, were rough, or just didn’t seem to fit together well. A few months later, Lauren surprised me by giving me my very own set of rocks that she had collected on the beach in Nice, France. For these reasons, these rocks are very important to me: they were given to me by my best friend, they are from France (my favorite place in the world), and they help me balance my feelings when I start to lose control.

Another aspect of my set of rocks that I really like (compared to Lauren’s, which are pure black and white) is that both my Positive rock and my Negative rock have flecks of the contrasting color. My black rock has tiny dots of white, and my white rock has tiny dots of black. Whenever I meditate over my rocks, I try to remember that like them, life is never 100% positive or 100% negative; rather, it is whichever you choose to focus on the most.

As one last note, the other objects in the photo above are one of Lauren’s rings, a photo of the two of us, and a postcard she sent me from France when she visited over the summer.