Constancy
The other day I found a turban shell in the sand. I’ve found a few before.
That day I set it to soak in a mild bleach solution.
I check it periodically. At least daily.
I have a sort of constancy about it.
It’s not gardening. (as in digital garden)
Gardening is a word signifying cultivation of a living thing.
It’s not art or craft.
Arts and crafts are about, say, waiting for things to dry. Or about finding time to add new stitches to a construction. Or waiting for an extra part to be available to make progress on a piece. Is the kiln available to take the next step with a piece of pottery?
I don’t know how to categorizing soaking this shell.
Art can be alive, in a way.
A shell is inert. Though the bleach is doing a task, to remove last dead organic material which lives on the turban shell.
I could leave it, but that choice would leave it with a bit of a stink.
I suppose it’s a kind of preservation process. Restoration?
The shell is inert. Unalive.
But it was home to a living creature.
A few months ago I got one of these from the water and got all the way to my car and then realized the critter was still in it.
For me, I had no choice but to put it back.
That was a beautiful shell, but I couldn’t possibly feel good about depriving that fellow earthling of its home.
So I locked up the car and walked back down. Past the tourists, down the Diamond Street steps, and down to the water.
I don’t think this shell I got day before yesterday is the same one.
Maybe a cousin to that other Megastraea undosa.
And so I am–preserving–this shell with my rituals.
Aside: That makes me think about my headers. All those chunks of HTML that were great in Netscape 4. In Modern Firefox or on an iPhone? not so much. I had to bleach off the HTML tables and use some clean 21st century layout to preserve and share them.
From Wikipedia
The common name turban snail presumably refers to the shell’s similarity in appearance to a turban. However, the scientific name Turbinidae is based on the genus name Turbo, which is Latin for spinning top, a child’s toy. The word turbine has a similar derivation.
(source)
Math and evolution made that shape to be a home for a creature.
From William Gibson’s Burning Chrome
the street finds its own uses for things
If a thing is lucky there is a second use for it. Maybe this little turban shell will yet serve a purpose.
I used a Dremel on it to smooth out some of the jagged edges.
I don’t know where it’s going, but it’s going.
See the turban shell tag for more turban shell posts.
