I live near the beach now. In the morning I see solitary beachcombers out, heads down, walking very slowly, pausing to pick up shells. I’ve done this. You look for ones that stand out—colors, shapes, something especially large or intricate.
The beach where we live is made up entirely of shells. There’s hardly any sand, just trillions and quadrillions of shells—some almost as tiny as grains of sand, some larger, some crushed, some whole—as far as the eye can see in either direction. They’re hard to walk on. Maybe that’s why ours isn’t the most popular beach in Florida.
Shells are the bones of shellfish. So the beach is like a pile of dead bodies, an enormous graveyard. And the shell collectors pace it up and down every day, looking for shellfish bones with that certain special quality that makes you want to stoop down and add it to your jar so you can put it on your kitchen windowsill and gaze upon it forever more.
There’s no denying the shells themselves are beautiful. I’ve seen the insides of shellfish, and they’re nowhere near as attractive as the outsides. Dead bodies generally look a lot worse than live ones. But seashells have so much intricate detail, such symmetry, such geometric precision, so many different hues and textures and colors. I’ve seen people spend hours combing the beach for pretty shells, and I don’t blame them.
It occurred to me that this is what we’re all doing, us living creatures. Once inside our temporary bodies—our shells—we spend lifetimes looking for just the right significant other pretty shell. Meanwhile we’re walking on top of infinite stockpiles of other shells, other bones of long-departed beings—which ought to be reminders that the time we get to spend in our own little shell is ridiculously brief. But no, we keep moseying down the beach; heads down, stuffing our jars with more and more fascinatingly formed skeletons.
Elegant.
Obliged.