i used to work for the coal mine [motion to window, glass of sherry in hand] just outside łęczna. there was some vein of quartz. this presents as shock of smooth white under pick.
in the rough, quartz has milky appearance. looks soft, as though good to eat. has almost diffuse whiteness of flesh. [smiling sheepishly, leaning forward] of course i didn't think that way at the time. it encourages certain pragmatism, to be paid by the ton.
quartz differs from surrounding expanse of inert stone. it is hard, brittle, it is fragile in a way which is dense and obstinate. i don't think of my own life against some incorruptible stone. maybe you imagine the pits this way, passing strength of man before mineral time. but this is fantasy. i have heard this before.
you see, beauty is a quality of the mind. it is a detached idea. a lustre is obtained in use of fine-grit polish, which is human activity and of course a colossal waste of efforts. sufficient labor dissipates perversion—anthracite in the cart has certain content, which will be expended in its time. [long pause] i think you agree that in same way, we keep something in reserve.
[pouring sherry] in service of relentless process, we once develop a technique to release something stored in reserve with rapidity. compounds which possess certain intrinsic tension. at slight provocation, this spends itself at once.
this we call detonation. [another glass emptied] it is a rapid and severe transfer of energy. stone crumbles, there is reverberating voice of thunder. the lamp-light shows in luminous cloud. from quartz, proceeds fine dust which shines. it is hard in the throat and sets you coughing. [getting up] let us move to the patio. i would like to take some air.
[pointing, almost to horizon] do you see there, the second field, narrow one marked by trees at south end. that belongs now to marcin. we trade it with him every other year. we grow some potatoes. it would be better to buy at market but i like to work the earth here. [sitting on bench] we rotate so the soil is not depleted.
but you remember [a pleasant little grin, a shrug] the violence, the release is in service to reason—a mechanics of utility, praxis of technique. it is the same with us. this is perpetual and thankful consolation, we can always expect object to our service, some purposeful cause. [fleeting pause] when i began work, to see quartz was a frustration. it does not burn.
the quartz had this nature, as course of circumstance. that it was an obstacle. this thing, which is an obstruction [long look] obtains its fulfillment in removal. some years later there was morrison, the american, with ingenious devices which demanded quartz in state of [amused look] perpetual vibration. this produced a new demand. [shifting in seat] so things changed.
quartz is hard and brittle. the devices demand pure, intact crystal to count out [wry smile] man's strength before mineral time. sempiternal oscillation in wrist-watch, or tone of captured voice in the phonograph. so we have careful work with hand tool, brush, to break and extricate from seam. [pointing] now you see just there, behind that long outbuilding. the dirt lane curves around that way. that was father's field. marcin, you see, married my sister...
coal is soft. some glitters in dark field, even rough-cast under dust. it has long rest, then we bring to surface, furnace, sky. expenditure, liberation, whatever i don't care. [meets your eyes] it's of no consequence to me which attitude you take. what concerns me now is some crystal, smooth, white, shining. under glass in some circuit, keeping time. some insane eternity. [faraway look] do you understand? here i am before you and yet [rueful smile] still preserved in małgorzata's sitting-room, some small device giving speech of my voice.
this is new quality. an apparatus which has an active life, it performs an operation which [exasperated] it's not like some stone axe or [points to field] this apparatus, tractor or plough, it possesses some continuity in itself, it proceeds within itself, bounded, like man proceeds in himself. but it does not spend itself [voice raised] somehow it proceeds unabated, continuously, within limits of its function.
it is in defiance... no, that is not right. [looking up, voice softening] it is not a question of defiance, but of some other activity, the idea [shaking head] it's an extension, putting into of some idea... putting into [closing eyes] putting into eternal form some mortal idea.
we didn't foresee the crystal, what order its form contains. they tell me now the crystal of quartz has pattern of silicon and oxygen, repeating in intervals [flatly, eyes to outbuilding near marcin's potato field] nothing in this world can resist observation. that is the character of our thought, to imagine the crystal counts somehow. its life tells time of material world, we hook it into stunted machine... not harnessed, no, that's wrong of course [urgently] something else, something like immersion, investigation, penetration but they all imply entrance to some mystery, some unknown world kept within, but for us now there is no mystery.
i've been retired 10 years, 11 years now. there is no return, no meeting back at the door. [voice growing soft again] you would like me to regret the mine, you would like me to have put down the pick with some sentiment, and i cannot do that. it is still a coal mine, and there is no mystery which has been stolen away. here are the quartz crystals, which now they take with more care, and less effort. and you can make them now in laboratory—to avoid imperfections, i suppose, something like that. removed from the world in this way. it is produced, in production it disappears. i have no concept of it.
[lost in reverie] there's this layout of molecules. regular lattice inside the crystal. we come to understand this once, but you see—now the rough stone under the earth is no good. even before the buyer would examine, point to hidden strata some line, inclusion, which disrupts the structure. from this, often, he determined it was worthless. [slow, careful] because the layout supplants it.
no, listen. [now animated again] listen, with understanding we decide the crystal is not an object in the earth. it is not even some collection of properties. [with difficulty, frustration] i cannot even talk about it. a quartz is this hard, white stone. i am not bothered by its peculiarities. then, it takes on the character of an obstacle. and subsequent, we decide again, by process it becomes a collection of properties and an anticipation. this spot of earth has within it an uncertainty. with my own eyes i see, and know what i see, but until hewn and cut i have no knowledge of its purpose. i cannot in good conscience say what i have before my eyes. i do not know its function, its end, any of what defines it [quickly] defines it by its relevance to me, these relationships to my life, its various implications. for investor holding the deed, he does not conceive even a piece of earth. his thinks in his endless unfolding of designs.
he knows refractive index. but what does this mean to the eye or the sweating brow? [snapping fingers] concept now is something apart. a concept without a place. we were once content to speak as we knew. now we accept only a precision which has no sense. i cannot feel it. glass of course i understand as physical. a window, like this one, i lift with care to keep it whole, not to injure the pane. for the crystal, it's not as i perceive it. it's layout. it's this integrity, this coherence of its interior logic. are you following me?
and you know [waving arms] more and more the world is made of this, of stranger more refined potency. in guise of a produced thing, we will have transcendent artifact, from which we are barred. [nods emphatically] yes, of course, you know this. it's no wonder the world seems uncertain, evanescent, when we cannot rightly comprehend or know the matters of which we speak with the most gravity, which occupy our dealings and acts of consequence. we substitute in mystery what we once knew as nature. this element, silicon, you know it exists at our pleasure. we have substances here whose sole purpose is [leaning forward] to bear out human will, and so bereft of any feeling we must have them to be symbols. some stock is traded, some august committee proclaims there is [stumbling] actinium or iridium or what-have-you, and so we have what basis we may to perform some rich theater of consequence.
at horizon [pointing] you see those gray buildings. on clear nights the sky is red there, lit from the bottom. that's the gas plant we worked so hard to place here. and to be sure, more wealth, money than ever before [a brief sigh] but what is this? we acquire something incomprehensible. don't misunderstand me, i understand the workings of this machinery. it is not difficult. but the meaning is fugitive, we have this inheritance now of properties which is inconstant, which is subservient to some great inhuman mind perhaps, a process of capital which raises us [impatient, practiced] and i am grateful. yes, i am, but now we don't mine quartz anymore, it's refuse now again. it has been contrived to produce it in a laboratory, which is to produce it as assemblage of traits, without the inconvenience of the prior reality of its substance, its origination, its place in circumstance of long, slower world which departs.
i think about design of detonation. this demands fuel which is consumed with speed. it is velocity of the dissipation which is its quality and, with some confinement in which proceeding fumes press together, we obtain force. finally, this breaks and collapse produces useful action. in result the origin of action is spent with no trace.
my nephew works in plastics factory at warsaw. they have had for many years a contract with the launch program. this presents no mystery to me. i can entertain the acceleration, there is reserve of forces held within the solid mass. this is spent, the vessel is expelled with force. now they discard this thing.
what happens now [brief pause] the circumstances change, there is process which continues. there is something which i cannot connect [furrowed brow] i fail to put together, but you see the image? do you see this, what i imagine? in blasting there is the instant of conversion and matter is undone, opened, the substance absent after stroke. there is no margin, there is pure process. i think God must see some slow procession, infinity of collision, interaction, exchange, mounting pressure. from within it must be slow, almost sedate. from outside at once there is transition to discord and wrath, then gone.
all of this transpires [mouth half-open] it is without a hand that marshals these actions, without a mind which has ever conceived. it is just surfeit of light, diffusion of heat, and the work is complete, you know, without order or purpose. the purpose we conceive is not the physical action which produces the result. we are complicit in the action of some more clever plot.
today we are selected and determined by system, which is an idea that exerts itself. there grows now a surplus or excess which must release. we gather like water behind a dam or charge in prepared cannon. the impression i obtain is that something moves toward destination. like synthesis, which pressure yields some crystalline perfection [staring off, seeing nothing] what man has done to bind matter to order, to process, it approaches conclusion, there is grander action in this of a merciless logic. [laughing] a masterwork presents itself. [shifting on the bench] there is this great drama, this spectacle. [sudden] we are bound to completion.
[sighing, getting up] transcendent body of man is a labor, thing which submits and delivers up the asked. this compensation—we enjoy faint knowledge that in it obtains crystal beauty, a conveying symmetry, there is cast image which cools after long fire. it is beautiful. [soft smile] but not for our eyes.