I found this shell in the shallow water of the Banana River, a lagoon that runs from Cape Canaveral in the north to the Indian River in the south. I picked it up because I was attracted to the deep green color, which of course dried to an ordinary grey. But I love it for its worm casings and barnacles, the traces of the many lives nurturing and nurtured by the creature that made this shell, concrete proof that our lives continue on past the death of the biological body and the mass of psychic energy we call the self. Had I resisted the temptation to plunge my arm into the cold water and take this shell, it undoubtedly would have offered refuge to a succession of hermit crabs before it began breaking up, turning slowly to sand, shifting back and forth under the surface of the clear green water.
Our bodies are as soft and vulnerable as the mollusk that grew this shell. And our selves have no more substance than the waves that break on the shore. But we do exist beyond what we call our "selves," in the wind and the tides and the sand under foot.
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Location:Cocoa Beach
