Ocean

Ocean, O ocean. I collect sea shells, which means an animal has to die in order for us to acquire its exoskeleton, the shell. Most are ground up into fertilizer or used as food, no part goes to waste, only to pain. I cannot resolve it, everybody eats everybody else, if only it didn't hurt, if only pork chops and chicken came like manna with the morning dew. Once they come close to successful petri dish meat, I will flour and fry the shaped mounds to a well done glutinous blobbo and eat without guilt. Until then, I remain carnivorous with boundaries. No veal, for instance.

I receive a list from a dealer located in the panhandle of Florida, that catalogs shells he is offering each month. The roster names the shells within their families, beginning with the univalves Buccinadae, Conus, Cypraea, Murex, Strombus, for example, and ending with available bivalves. Univalve defines as one shell, like unicorn for one horn. A bivalve is a two-sided clam, as a bicycle has two wheels. I am basically a univalve gal, but could possibly be persuaded towards a /bi/ attraction. Ha. Thin pun, not really, I love hetero sex, if there were any lying around here. As I said, we are in the univalve world. Figure that out and don't call me.

Anyways, Ed the dealer had a listing of an oversized Tonna galea and I ordered it. All you have from his list is a print description including condition, size, and site where it was found. You can request a picture by email, but Ed has always sent exceptional specimens and also has a generous return policy. You pay after he sends you the shell and you approve. This one was enchanting beyond many, simply colored with a dull brown exterior and white inside, the beauty of it contained in the thinness of the laterally ribbed exterior, that an animal withstood current and predator and produced a whorl of calcium as its home, refined as a porcelain leaf.

It is a large one, I will post a pic on Dreamville later, maybe tomorrow. Yes, I put the shell to my ear, yes I pretend it's the ocean. When I want a quick rinse of meditation, I hold a shell to each ear, culling the sounds of the room into a spiral hum that puts me at the edge of the foam, watching the tiny coquinas dig back into wet sand as bladderwort scuds over my feet. It is a hum people have listened to for centuries, it is ethereal and logical science at the same time.

Regardless of thorough cleaning, a decent shell is imbued with ocean, salt and remnants of the snail creator. It pulls me again, away and to soothing, and I pushed my nose as far into the Tonna as I could, as if trying to crawl from whence I came, and breathed. There are a number of places that are the best for inhaling: the skin of someone you love, not necessarily erotically; the center of a leafy plant, loaded with exhalations of oxygen--you may have seen me diving my head into the begonia--no scent, but it's a cheap oxygen bar; the last best place in my compendium of smelling places is the ocean, the salt ocean where every drop of water is its own universe.

I have yet to attempt freezing ocean water so that I can puddle my senses in the winter, another alternative might be to purchase marine salt at the fish store and make that into a briny aromatherapy. The easiest is to get a sea shell with a deep curve that holds residual grains of sand and salt and animal. I asked Ed if he had a Pleuroploca, a Horse Conch, the state shell of Florida which in the old days could grow to a whopping two feet long. Yes he did, it was sixteen inches and still had the periostracum, an outer covering similar to our cuticles. This means it was extra stinky. Oh boy for me!

It arrived yesterday, an orange steeple under a dried skin of dark brown proteins, carefully wrapped and containing a operculum, the door the mollusk closes when it pulls all the way in. I have thus sat on the couch, holding this hefty monster up to my face and breathing, breathing, inhaling as if I were a hound, spinning into the sound of ocean and the womb we came from.

The cats thought I had food, checked the scene out and left, shaking their paws as if they just stepped in water. Maybe they did, maybe the ocean was there, the waves roiling, spray escaping onto solid floor; salt, magnesium, potassium, and sulfate. O ocean!

The ocean cradles life and force, tides cycle with the pull of the moon. Let the tides pull you to slumber, to sleep, as the crabs click during crepuscular time, looking for bits of detritus. Sleep and dream of rhythms of salinity, of stars reflected on dark abyssal moods, of schools of luminescent little fish, radiating. They shine for you.