D. H. Lawrence paints a watercolour outdoors beside a pale, veined stone and a small paint box.

How a stone holds its ground and reaches out

David Herbert Lawrence (1885–1930) was an English writer from Eastwood. In his essay … Love Was Once a Little Boy, a discussion of human desire turns to something that at first appears to manage quite well without it. A stone lies still, has weight and resists the pressure of a hand. Its very solidity is what interests Lawrence.[1]

The two sides of the stone

When we touch a stone, the first thing we feel is its resistance. Lawrence describes that resistance in words one might use of a determined person. The stone maintains its individuality. Yet this is only half his account. Its other tendency is difficult to perceive in the same encounter because it moves on a different timescale.[1]

Everything that exists, even a stone, has two sides to its nature. It fiercely maintains its own individuality, its own solidity. And it reaches forth from itself in the subtlest flow of desire.[1]

The time of air, sun and rain

Across ages, Lawrence writes, the stone enters into delicate combinations with air, sun and rain. He reads even its weight as an expression of its relation to the earth. This is how the essay finds its way back to people. Each person who approaches another brings a distinct shape to the encounter. Lawrence can imagine something moving between them precisely because each keeps an integrity of their own.[1]