The rough stone

In September I joined something very old. Most of it I promised to keep. This is the part I can tell.

By Sovandarapor (James) Kong · 2026-10-11 · Life

A letter came after the Saturday. It was signed by a man whose title I still say wrong, and it named two men who would look after me from now on.

It also said there was reading. A secretary walked me through the logins with screenshots, one step at a time, and the site let me in first time.

The reading starts with a stone.

Picture a block as it comes out of the quarry. Lumpy, uneven, no use to anyone yet. Next to it, the same stone after a workman has spent time on it: square, smooth, ready to sit in a wall without wobbling. The first one is you on the day you walk in. The second one is the job.

You get three tools for it, and none of them is impressive. A ruler two feet long, marked into twenty-four inches. A hammer. A chisel.

The ruler is the day. Twenty-four hours, cut into three: some for whatever you pray to, some for work, some for rest and for helping someone who needs it. I read that and checked my own week. Work had eaten the other two and was asking for seconds.

The hammer is conscience. Its job is to knock off whatever sticks out, the vain thought, the unkind one, before it ends up in something you say. The chisel is education. It works slower, a shaving at a time, and it never finishes.

That is the whole kit. There is no fourth tool for shortcuts, and no version where you pay more and skip the chisel.

There is a floor that goes with all this. Black and white squares, the good days and the bad ones laid side by side. If you have scrolled to the bottom of any page on this site, you have already stood on it.