If, as a researcher, I acquire a mineral specimen, I will probably break it apart, and report on my findings. If I acquire a stone as an ordinary person I will hold and examine and ‘mythify’ it in an effort to become intimate with it. All these choices affect me, and my chosen relational(s). When we do something in order to report on it, we are re-made in the image of our intention. So, too, in the case of intimacy.