Among the many forms into which lava may harden – cinders, tubes, columns, ash, pumice, glass – this one seems the least doctrinaire, the least likely to endorse the orthodox axiom that A is A. Light in the hand, already half in love with other elements, it bears swirls that resemble flickers of flame, and blobs like the congealed drops on the outside of a paint can. Inside, it is packed with vessicles, and sometimes with large smooth-sided hollows like the inside of a nutshell. It might be the material pelt of a burst bubble or the chrysalis left behind when some rock-moth hatched and flew off.
Other igneous rocks – gabbro, granite – identify themselves as citizens of deep time, and remain its devout parishioners. Gjall joins us in history, already wearing the insignia of shift that others will later have thrust upon them by the soft persistence of erosion. “The turnings of fire,” says Herakleitos, “first sea, but of sea half is earth, half lightning storm.” When it flew from the volcano it was as phlegm, rock froth, the equivalent of ocean spray that leaves salt-suds like grounded clouds snagged in the driftwood and alders. Now it lies among the burnt-out rubble of the lava field, testimony that negative capability is possible even for rocks, that there is no quarter of the perplexed earth not afflicted with longing.