Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Whorls






That's the shell out of which I shook an almost fetus-like blob of gray slime a couple of weeks ago in my cottage at Hedgebrook. Slurp, it slid out. Now it sounds like the sea. It's a perfect breast and it's a shell. What is that whorl called at the tip? Are there names for such beauty? If you lift it up, the edge curls over, a ledge, hard, smooth and shiny, tinted pink that disappears in a curve. My finger strains to feel up and inside the darkness on the underside of the whorl. I am certain no one has seen inside.

That's my first copy of To the Lighthouse, and it's filled with tiny margin notes, written by me and a boy I loved. I've underlined this.

To want and not to have, sent all up her a body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have - to want and want - how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again!
 



7 comments:

  1. That tip is known as the apex. Beautiful picture.

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  2. I have that exact same edition of To the Lighthouse. I found it at a used book sale and loved the cover. I've never read it though. I keep saying I will.

    The shell is so beautiful.

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  3. It's moon snail. I have a few of these scattered around my bookshelves.

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  4. What a pair they are. The book listening to the ocean and the shell listening to the book?

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  5. I'm glad you saved the shell from whence came the slime. You suffered for it!

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  6. I also have that same edition, with liner notes!
    I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the sublime synchronicity of "a moon, worn as if it had been a shell"

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  7. The shell and the quote are perfect companions, seeking, yearning, full of mystery.

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