This afternoon I picked up a large, spiraling shell that has resided on the bathroom counter for years. The shell spirals into itself and out of sight; almost all of the surface is hidden inside. I wondered how small the spiral might become, and whether anything might be permanently lodged there. I poured water into the opening and turned the shell, so that the water gurgled inside. I had no way of telling how deep inside the shell the water penetrated. But when I turned the shell sideways, all the water poured out the bottom. Corkscrewing down the middle was a space around which the spiral centered. No matter how deep the spiral goes, the shaft always leads down and out -- which seems to me to somewhat defeat the purpose of a shell, not that this particular shell has ever served any purpose for me except looking pretty on my bathroom counter.
On Sunday, at a red light on Tryon and Cary Parkway, the passenger door of a VW Bug next to us opened and a man got out. After walking about ten feet up Tryon through the damp fragments of some hurricane or other, he stopped and walked back. The passenger window rolled down expectantly. He fumbled without success for something inside the car and jumped back as a small silvery object -- a pack of cigarettes or a cell phone, maybe -- flew through the window and landed on the road. He picked it up and, as he began to walk back away, glanced over his shoulder and gave arc to a large globule of spit that splattered on the Bug's windshield and instantly dissolved in the rain.
I am resolved to continue to end my affections on civil terms.
posted on Monday, August 16, 2004
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