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The following 11 sections are
excerpted from an artists book,
originally published in 2003 in an edition of 100 copies,
digitally printed and hand bound.
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Twenty-Seven
Lessons
in
Visionary Geology:
A Treatise for the Beginner
with text and
illustrations by
Clayton F. Merrell
"the earth is cylindrical."
-Anaximander
"All space is matter equally, spherical and immobile."
-Parmenides
"And suddenly, through the midst of the air,
passes first, a pool of water, then . . ."
-Flaubert
Table of Contents
Lesson 1
Mountains consist of mountains piled on mountains.
Plains are made of plains stacked vertically, like pancakes.
All sedimentary stone was spinning as it was
deposited. This is the reason for the earth's general hardness.
Lesson 2
The globe is a dense ball of water on which the continents float.
Three of the earth's continents are completely submerged and have never been seen.
Lesson 3
A continent, when dropped, will shatter like a plate.
East to west, each level plane gives way to a sloping
down to the next, all the distance around the globe; in this way, the
earth is a spherical spiral.
Oceans, being heavier, are horizontal. Seas, being lighter, are sometimes vertical.
Air is equal to water in every way.
Peel away the earth and there is another
underneath, slightly paler, slightly softer, but just the same.
All liquids are self-supporting. They have infinite depth and are infinitely thin.
Earth floats on water as water floats on earth. When water levels rise, land levels rise correspondingly.
Flow is a property of all matter.
Lesson
7
In the end, finding themselves in a low depression, rivers will curl
into a ball and sleep.
Lesson
8
Oceans consist of rivers, squirming and writhing over one another.
Rivers consist of streams struggling for space and prominence like
intestines.
The sea accepts all the water of all the
rivers and all the streams and all the rains in the world without ever
rising an inch.
All small lakes everywhere are in danger of lifting at one edge and rippling through the air like loose fabric.
The sky is so low that it drags the ground.
Valleys constantly fray at the edges.
Lesson
10
As the earth takes air into its vast lungs, the outer surface, or
crust, begins to crack.
If it could be heard, the sound of the
earth, when struck, would be that of an iron cooking pot.
Lesson
11
Mountains grow like trees: expansively from their centers as well as
extensively from their extremities.
All of the heaviest mountains are underground.
An "orphan mountain" is one that has
been left behind by the sudden exodus of its range.
