Until a few years ago I had never heard of sea glass. I probably had seen sea glass before but had never thought twice about these glass shards. I was more interested in shells. A friend from another century who makes ornamental jewellery as a pastime, not for sale but for gifting, told me that she picked up sea glass from the beaches of Maine, USA.
It was later that I actually saw sea glass on a beach. Walking along the shore in Mirissa, I saw my daughter picking something from the sand. ‘Sea glass,’ she told me. By that time she had also taken up the fascinating art of making jewellery out of all kinds of odds and ends, sea glass included.
Thereafter, whenever strolling along a beach, I would look for sea glass. Invariably I would collect at least a handful. Not being artistically inclined, I didn’t know how to differentiate ‘nice pieces’ from those that she would ‘reject.’ I didn’t know what sizes and shapes made sense to this jeweller who would spend meticulous hours turning out earrings and pendants which to me seemed beautiful.
Being ignorant, I picked them all, simply because my crude filtering may have very well discarded something she could have worked on and kept something that was, in terms of her craft, too crude.
I didn’t know then that sea glass takes anything from 20 to 200 years to acquire its characteristic texture. Now that I know, I am sure the next time I pick one of these small green pieces of glass I will study it more closely.
Twenty to 200 years. I can’t wrap my mind around these numbers. How much life must have passed before each piece landed on some shore, I ask myself now. What signatures of history have been inscribed upon them, in what languages?
I can’t read them. Just as I can’t read the stone that has become a paperweight by decree of a writer. I don’t know where it was picked up from, whether it is part of a bigger rock or whether it was crafted in some manner.
It has character. Theoretically, all things do have character; all things are signatured, if you will. Only, we don’t bother to take notice. We don’t bother to read. We don’t bother to decipher.
A geologist would shed some elemental light on this object that is not the subject of these reflections. Black with white strains. Layers and layers of meaning. Just like a mountain. Just like an epic narrative. Just like someone’s life. Someone’s death. A country. A community. A household. All layered. All made of ‘stones’ that have multiple stories made for as many or more interpretations.
Why this shape and not some other? Why these and not other angles? Why black and white? How did these whites ‘cut in’ the way they did? And that’s just the visual aspect. There’s also texture. Different textures in different parts. How did it turn out the way it did?
A geologist would give a plausible answer to each of these questions. Then again, if rock is a metaphor and so too size, shape, weight, texture and colour, then it is not just an inanimate configuration of nature, but a metaphor for almost anything.
There’s sea glass all around. We don’t see. Even if we do, our eyes move on to things that are of more prominent dimensions. There are rocks like that. People like that. There are backstories and histories, again unseen and if seen brushed aside.
Sea glass jewellery. Sea glass people. Sea glass schools and syllabuses, legislators and constitutions. Sea glass earth, wind, fire and water. Sea glass politics. Sea glass lies. Sea glass love, too. It’s there on the shores we walk on not knowing that there’s play of sand, wind and water across time. It’s there but we don’t see. It’s there, seen and ignored. It’s there, seen, picked up and misread.
We are a species that will not observe and yet insist on judging. We miss the sea glass and therefore our descriptions of the shore are invariably incomplete and skewed. We don’t see certain faces and those that we do see we misread or read not at all.
We can’t pick up all the sea shells, all the sea glass and all the driftwood and other things that make ‘a beach,’ sand included. It is easier to let the gaze sweet across a landscape quickly, note the unmistakable lines, colours and shapes and use these to paint the picture, ‘The Seashore.’ But there’s art that’s unnoticed. There’s poetry that will not be read.
We could be so much richer, but it is the generalised poverty that we seem determined to embrace.
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