Monday, January 5, 2009

OLD BLOG: Beach Blog 6: shell collecting

Monday, January 05, 2009

I’ve been staying at the beach the past couple of months. While here, I’ve been walking on the beach, collecting shells from time to time, and making necklaces. So I’ve made a lot of observations about shells and collecting them. These are the kind of things that one might apply to life, if one is so inclined.
— You have to go where the shells are. (This might seem obvious, but if you’re applying these observations to getting a job or meeting someone special or whatever, you have to go where jobs or people or whatever are.)
— Watch out for SUVs. (I don’t know what that has to do with life or philosophy or whatever, but it’s true. Watch out for them.)
— Wear comfortable shoes (not real deep, but also true).
— If you look back and see only one set of footprints that means there was probably a high tide recently. You can be fairly sure others have been there before you. (If you want to think it has something to do with Jesus carrying you that’s fine, but I don’t really want to get into that.)
— If you’re really serious about collecting shells, bring along some container. You’ll need it.
— You can just walk around and wait for something to sort of jump out at you. But you won’t find a lot of shells that way. You have to actively look for them.
— There are lots of shells out there. You can never collect them all. And why would you want to? Eventually you have to decide what it is that you’re looking for.
— The really nice shells you notice at first may seem much less interesting after you’ve been looking for a while.
— Sometimes there’s very little out there, sometimes a lot. You have to go looking often to get to know when the good times and bad times are likely to be. (I still don’t know. I assume it has to do with the tides.)
— You’re more likely to notice the sort of shells you’re looking for, the kind you’re focused on, assuming those kinds of shells are out there. Just having a particular kind of shell in mind helps you notice it.
— When there is an overwhelming number of shells, it’s hard to see individuals. It may seem like a lot of worthless bits of shells, but if you really get down and search, you can find some great stuff. And when you bend down to pick something up, keep your eyes open. There are often things that you wouldn’t’ve noticed if you weren’t down there close.
— If you get too focused on shells, you can miss out on all the life out there: people walking by; birds in the surf or overhead; even the sun and the waves. Life is more important than collecting shells.
— Sometimes there’s yucky stuff out there among the shells. You don’t have to pick that stuff up. You can just move on and not deal with it. (I wouldn’t recommend this for dealing with major, real-life issues. But if you’re looking for something new in your life, you don’t have to take the bad stuff. Just move on and keep looking.)
— It can take a while for the tide and other processes to get rid of something dead.
— The more beautiful and colorful and unusual a shell, the more likely it is to easily break or already be broken, or to be too small to do much with.
— Sometimes a shell looks delicate but is much sturdier than you’d think, or vice versa. You can’t really tell unless you apply some pressure to it.
— If you don’t watch your step, you might accidentally crush something wonderful that you hadn’t noticed.
— You don’t really know what you have until you clean it up and look at it in a different light.
— Sometimes you’ll see couples out there, walking along together. If they’re looking for shells they probably won’t find a lot unless they are both committed to it, and they’re looking for the same things.
— The people you see out on the beach when it’s sunny are different from the people you see when it’s overcast.
— While size does matter, bigger isn’t necessarily better.
— Very few, if any, shells are just one color.
— Some of the most interesting shells to me might be thought ugly by others.
— I suspect there’s no such thing as a “perfect” shell: completely bilaterally symmetric or with no blemishes. But that’s okay. Sometimes beauty is found in the “imperfections”.