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46 Thoreau Considers a Stone At the center of the pond an island of ice, circumference twenty feet smaller than the pond itself. No wind or rain so water clears, except where the sun pushes the ice’s shadow. This man, unsure of the pond’s depth, throws a stone, weight puncturing its plane, the slow drift in sluggish water. The life of a stone is lost, or, at best, ignored, but this man returns to his hovel to record the sound a stone makes when it pierces the frozen mask. That night he considers how in time all masks disappear, and, with this, how all things expand or shrink. In his sleep he dreams of light pressing down to reveal the stone: a turtle, no longer asleep, rising toward new air, hind claws making use of that very stone. ...

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