"At first she talked. The third full day, rasping, Deary told both Lou and Pete about rocks. She was passing on a last-minute legacy. It took two hours on and off, and it was this: Frames of film comprise every rock in the world. (Have you got that?) If you slice a rock thin enough, and splice the slices serially as frames, you have a documentary film. The film displays the long history of the world from that rock's views. Together the world's rocks hold a visual record of all time. You splice the frames and store them in reels by continents and by some rough stabs at their more or less infinite subdivisions of regions and times. It all badly needed film editors...
-At any stage after splicing, one need only run the films through the projectors to see it, any of it, eventually all of it, the world from anywhere and all angles in all its times. At least up to a random cutoff point when someone wild with curiosity- called a halt and began slicing again. During and after the big work, ever-new rock would record films of the ongoing life of their sites: people showing up on the planet, and moving over it."
from The Maytrees by Annie Dillard- this passage reminded me of my friend Matthew Kern's paintings, see them at www.matthewkern.com