The Inexorable Mouths of Snails

I have two 'statues' of goddesses, both of which have great meaning for me. Each of them was not made, as such, but found and seen to be meaningful. I have this idea that I should photograph them and I also need to find and photograph more such little bits of naturally occuring iconagraphy (Icons are images of that which one finde holy - Idols being images of other people's gods, usually ones you don't agree with...).

One is a sea-tumbled lump of pumice, roughly shaped like a woman sitting crosslegged. There is a niche, just where the right arm and lap would meet, which cradles a roughly infant-shaped second bit of sea-tumbled pumice. Overall, it looks like a mother nursing a child. I found them together on the beach as young girl, I think when I was 10. The 'baby' stone has amazingly stayed with its 'mother' all these years.

The second, I found on a friend's farm in my mid-twenties. It is, I suppose, the broken off tooth or tine of some piece of long-lost farm equipment. It is caked with rust and looks immesurably old. She (I say she, because it looks female) looks like a paleolithic goddess made somehow of iron, short arms prjecting to either side, basic representation of a head, narrow torso and waist, hips and buttocks and legs represented by a shaped wedge that tapers to assumed feet. I know that a man-made machine gave her her original function, but also that fate and the elements are what has made her look as she does now, and given her a meaning beyond a lump of rust.

Strangely, these little images have always resonated more for me than others made by human hands. They are more significant, I think, because they are so random.

Found goddesses.