Bones Of The Sea

Curly-Q, Minneapolis, Minnesota, iPhone Shots, February 18th, 2023, photo © 2023 by Liz Schultz. All rights reserved.

Liz unpacks the spiral shells out of a plastic peroxide bottle with the top slit open to form a hinge. Amy carefully packed them for us before we left St. Joe Beach. Shells, the bones of the sea. Skeletons made of calcium, color revealing the nutrients they ate. Shells scattered on the beaches we visited in the panhandle. Sand dollars washed up at Crooked Beach. You had to wade into the water at first to spot the good ones. Later you trained your eyes to pluck them from wet sand. “It’s like Neptune,” Liz said. “The wave rolls in, all foamy and murky. When the wave washes out, for a moment, everything is clear. That’s when you find your prize.” The translucent jingle shells appeared on Windmark and tiny coquina shells. Surf clams, cat’s paws, and limpets with holes in them on St. Joe. Protection for the soft insides that live outside in the ocean. No backbones.

Shell on the Moon, Minneapolis, Minnesota, iPhone Shots, February 18th, 2023, photo © 2023 by Liz Schultz. All rights reserved.

 

Backbone. We say those with backbone are strong, can pull their weight in a crisis. I’m not good in a crisis. I don’t pivot quickly. But Liz does. In chaotic situations, she will grab my hand, say, “I got cha” and weave her way to safety. Many of my friends react to danger in quick response. I am a person that sniffs out danger from a distance. Empathic. I sense energy around and don’t move into spaces that feel toxic. It’s a different way of sensing the world, moving through air, paying attention to earth. Taurus. Moon.

But what I really want to say is that it’s good to be home from the ocean. To be back in the Midwest. At least for a time. The ocean is constantly moving. The 40 mph wind gusts and driving rain against the beach house last weekend, nowhere near the category five of Michael a few years ago. So much did not survive. So many homes and trees destroyed, people living five years later in RVs on their land under carports. They have not rebuilt.

But people are resilient. A better word is flexible. Resilience is the fortitude to will your way back to the way things once were. That’s often not possible. Not after a hurricane. Not after a tornado. Not after a pandemic. Or an earthquake. Or war. So much suffering in this world. Flexibility is the ability to change. To flow into what is new and unfamiliar. Adapting to a world around you that is ever changing. I used to hate change. Too unpredictable, unfamiliar, disorienting. Now I try to embrace it, learning from the people around me. Some thrive on change. They are at their best when things are new and in flux. I am more of a reflector, like the Moon. 

 

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15-minute Writing Practice on Shells, written on an old iPad Mini 4, Saturday, February 18th, 2023

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To Understand War, Celebrate Peace

Celebrate Peace – 18/52, BlackBerry 52, Golden Valley, Minnesota, May 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

It’s Memorial Day 2011. The skies over Golden Valley are green and gray. Rain pelts the freshly splashed grass seed. The lawn has been mowed. The cedar branches that bent to the ground in the last snowstorm are trimmed. I’m cleaning the rust off my writing pen. Where to start?

I visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial site and left Uncle James a message. He is not forgotten. One day I will take the time to go back through my film archives and locate the negatives from the day I photographed the Wall in 1984. It was an unplanned visit, a stop on a road trip back East after I moved from Montana to the Twin Cities. Unknown to me, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was being dedicated that same year. Veterans dotted the landscape of Washington D.C.; I found my uncle’s name and did a rubbing on a thin strip of paper.

A few years ago, I reconnected with my aunt, his widow, and told her I had never forgotten James. She told me that the day he died, he visited her and asked about the baby, his son. The baby was not yet born. He never met him. She swears he was there with her, standing in the same room. She would not get the official word until the next day—he had been killed in war. I feel somber inside, remembering. But it’s not like me to forget. Some think I live in the past. Sometimes the moment is the past. The same way it is the future. To understand war, I try to celebrate peace.

It feels good to be writing again. Art-A-Whirl was a big success. The Casket Arts Studio space was my home for the last month. The Writers Hands Series is up on the wall. The cards and postcards are selling well. Liz has her Found Frame Series up; her Landmark Series makes beautiful postcards. Thank you to all who visited during the crazy rain and tornado skies of Art-A-Whirl. It means a lot to us.

A haunting aspect of art and writing is that you have to burn the candle at both ends to see projects through. I was sick during Art-A-Whirl week but just had to keep going. Once I got to the studio, the energy of art and the people who love it carried the day. But I had to give up time in other areas, like the unplanned hiatus from red Ravine. I appreciate you, the readers, who keep coming back. I checked in but did not have the energy to write and prepare for the long hours of Art-A-Whirl. Something had to give. I missed the community.

The photograph of the PEACE sign (part of the BlackBerry 52 Series with Lotus) is made of seashells sent to me by Heather, a friend I met through red Ravine. She often tweets about her life by the California shoreline. One day, she asked if we wanted her to send a little of the ocean our way. In a landlocked Cancer stupor, I said, “Yes!” She mailed a box of shells the next day. When they got here, they were filled with sand and smelled like salt air, crab, and clam. I laid them out on the deck table under Minnesota skies to air out. Peace flowed from the backs of ocean creatures. Thank you, Heather.

And thank you for listening. I am off to Studio 318 to work on a piece about May Sarton. It’s time to get back to my practices. It’s time to write again. It’s time to post on red Ravine, to journal and print more photographs. This week is First Thursdays. Stop by and see us! What I really want to say is that I appreciate the community that visits here. Art and writing are not created out of a vacuum. We are all in this together.

-posted on red Ravine, Memorial Day, Monday, May 30th, 2011

Lotus and I will continue to respond to each other’s BlackBerry Jump-Off photos with text, photography, poetry (however we are inspired) for the 52 weeks of 2011. You can read more at BlackBerry 52 Collaboration. If you are inspired to join us, send us a link to your images, poetry, or prose and we’ll add them to our posts.

-related to posts: WRITING TOPIC — DEATH & DYING, PRACTICE – Memorial Day – 10min, PRACTICE: Memorial Day — 10min, May Day Self-Portrait: Searching For Spring, The Yogi (Cover Page) — 14/52, Nesting & Resting, Pulling Out The Sun (By Day, By Night), BlackBerry 365 Project — White Winter Squirrel, Flying Solo — Dragonfly In Yellow Rain, Searching For Stillness, icicle tumbleweed (haiga) — 2/52, The Mirado Black Warrior, Waning Moon (Haiga), Alter-Ego Mandala: Dreaming Of The Albatross (For Bukowski), EarthHealer — Mandala For The Tortoise

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