Sometimes I wonder if the rocks can remember all the lives they’ve lived. Once a star larger than our sun, then kaprooshhh! A supernova! Now, building the bedrock of the superocean, Panthalassa. And another, mingling in a bubbling volcano. They seem unmoving and stagnant to our juvenile eyes, but they have been crushed, melted, restructured and birthed into many lives across millennia. They have been busy, scattering and evolving into every living body, including our wonderfully flabby human ones. The carbon in our muscles, the calcium in our bones, and the iron in our blood map out a guide to our ancient and vibrant past lives.

As much as I love relishing being part of the grandiose of supernovas and time across millennia, in all honesty, this collection is a simple gesture. They are made with pebbles with no special names, and glass not as revered as gems. I am proud of my silversmithing, but I am not here to impress you with ground-breaking smithing skills either. What I would like to share, though, is the dazzle of the common earth and the joy of dancing in its rhythms.

Like the rocks and the water, the commonly found matters of this earth is where the magic lies. Because to be common, is to be abundant. There is no denying of the awe seeing a rare sparkly gemstone. Yet, there is a deep wonder felt from the endless diversity of the common pebbles that dress our forests and shores. The abundance of them doesn’t make them any less of a miracle.

Every spiritual tradition and wise person will teach you the importance of gratitude. It is the container in which all of life’s creativity circulates. When we are grateful, we are generous. And to be generous is to generate, create! But how can we be grateful if we don’t believe that our reality is abundant? In a careless world, it is easy to mistake the common as mundane, or even worse, exploitable. We’ll miss the beat of life if we don’t listen closely to the repeating drums of the humble commons.

Do rocks remember their pasts? Do we?
We forget, then we remember. We are offsprings of the stars.
We are depleted, then filled. We are born through the waters of many mothers.
We are crushed, then re-birthed. We are stones livened by the sea.

We are the common, the plenty, the generous re-imaginations of life. Do you hear the rhythm? The clunk-clunk, swish-swish-ing? Over and over, dodadoda 돌아돌아, we return to earth. And every time, we dance our way home. After all, we are not much more and not much less—we are rocks, dancing.