Image Description: This side of the lap pad is a light sand soft fleece. The lap pad is a vertical rectangle and a couple inches thick. A quote is hand embroidered with black embroidery floss. The quote is broken into one shorter and one longer paragraph, and the words “mountain. And” are squeezed in between text. Mel Baggs’ name is embroidered larger at the bottom and underneath is the URL to the source of the quote.
The quote and URL read:

I’d fill my pockets with rocks. Or sit on the ground and stack rocks all over my body. And the rocks would tell me about my own solidity. They’d tell me about being part of mountains. And avalanches and mudslides. And volcanoes. And all the other things rocks know about. A small piece of granite in my hand would tell me about the smell of sun on a granite mountainside.

They told me I was part of the world too. Of the larger world. Many people say the world when they really mean the social world of human beings. The world is so much bigger than that. They told me that even if no human being told me this in my lifetime, that I do have a place in the world. A very small, particular place just for me. They said that everyone has a place like that. And that when I am done with my place in the human world, I will turn into all the animals and fungi and plants and microbes that will likely eat my remains. And then I will have other places in the world entirely. I may yet be a redwood tree when I grow up, just like some rocks turn into sand in the ocean.

-Mel Baggs
https://ballastexistenz.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/empty-mirrors-and-redwoods/

Photography: Francisco echo Eraso