By Jesse Curran

It’s the newest device, sparking with the seven-to-eight-year-old set, available in varying shapes and weights. Metamorphic or sedimentary styles, the occasional igneous panache. Gneiss, schist, quartz, feldspar, what you will, so long as it’s sorta smooth, softened by centuries of swishing seawater. No two are the same, jazzed with metallic sharpie and snazzy acrylic paint. As one happy patron notes, “when I got into it, it was awesome. You just use your imagination.” Sound fabulous? Want to know how to get one? I’ll tell you. On New Year’s Day, go down to the beach and take a long walk. While striding into the wind, keep eyes down on the sand for sea glass and not-so-bumpy phone-shaped stones. Carry back as many as you can, tuck them in the pockets of your parka and bear them back. When you get home, start in with the paint pens. Each rocksta holds a different persona, though they might only be charged by a child’s personality. Each one gets a name and can be in convo with another one. Don’t worry about the weight, your mom won’t mind carrying it in her pocketbook. Indeed, she’ll take comfort in it, holding it in her palm while waiting in line at the grocery. She’ll stand there with her shopping cart full of lemons and avocados and uncured salami, breathing into her belly and rubbing the stone, thinking of how the day will come when these darlings will switch from rocksta to insta. She knows this device is worth the weight. She senses that what the girls will lose, they’ll forever seek.

Artwork by Lesley C. Weston (Rocks painted with encaustic pigments on a well-used cardboard work table cover)

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