Perefction

The broken shells, especially these which, I think [I know my profound ignorance about sea creatures] are whelks, always fascinate me with their beautiful spiral structure and the pink-coral-orange interiors. I can't resist picking them up and walking down the beach with the beautiful ones in my hands. Only at the last minute do I come to my senses and remember I have lined my books shelves with them already and as they got drier over the winter they rained small puddles of sand around themselves. So I leave the latest find on a post beside the beach path for those who are more rushed to find and perhaps wonder at, if only briefly. [I do not have great confidence in my fellow humans, most are so distracted by things they find more important than tiny bit of perfection.]
The season is winding down and we are all aware of it. Soon the tourists will mostly have gone home and the small parking lot near my favorite beach will have space for me to park in the middle of the day; I can take a chair, a granola bar and a bottle of water along with my book and read in peace for a while. The weather will remain beautiful through most of September, barring nasty wind and rain from hurricanes roaring up the Atlantic coast.
All people in the higher number decades talk about time flying faster for us. Strange how that happens as many of us, I speak for myself mainly, actually have more time for enjoying, fewer commitments, less hustle and bustle. Yet the time flies. Is ice cream more wonderful because you can't dawdle too much while eating it because it will melt? Does anyone think about that except a septuagenarian? Or does everyone else take the ice cream for granted -- there'll always be another summer? Well, not ALWAYS ... as Hamlet says, "ah, there's the rub."

She Sells Sea Shells...

Well, no, I don't sell sea shells. But I think most people who are near the sea have their small stash -- or a larger than small one -- of sea shells. They are beautifully formed, no matter how broken apart the sea and birds have rendered them, their surfaces are wonderful to stroke, whether smooth or ridged or bumpy. And they show wonderful subtle colors until they have been bleached bone white by the sun.

How this beauty happens is a greater mystery to me than beauty of people, plants and animals. That is partly ignorance and partly unfamiliarity, for this is the first time in my 70 years I have been near the ocean for more than a week at a time and I know almost nothing about how these shells are formed to protect the delicate -- and unbeautiful -- creatures that live in them. I do not know their names either. I am ignorant and thus more amazed than I would be if I weren't so ignorant.

No matter how many books we have read, how much we have traveled, how many pieces of music we know, how much art we have seen in museums and books and elsewhere, there will always be areas we know nothing about. Even the great geniuses of the Renaissance era who seemed to be so well versed in everything really weren't. Probably few of them could bake a loaf of bread or forge a poker for the fireplace, let alone name all the birds in their backyard. Ignorance is not shameful unless it's willful arrogance that says some kinds of knowledge are beneath their interest or if the ignorance is the result of a stunted, benumbed curiosity. I cannot name and do not understand these shells, nor do I understand the process by which the enamelled bowl they lie in was made. But their beauty, sitting on my table gives me pleasure.