seashells as a metaphor for politics
I've become obsessed with seashells. It began when I visited my mom in Florida for the holidays. We walked on the beach, feet burning, pausing every few yards to squat and scour through piles of shells and debris. I challenged her to see who could find the most yellow shells - not orange or ivory but pure, daffodil, canary yellow. Amidst being asked what I intend to do with my life - what's next after grad school? where are you going to live? do you have a boyfriend? - I managed to find a measly four yellow shells, compared to my mom's six. Still, we pocketed the tiny things and now they live in a purse pocket of mine, reminding me of December in the Florida heat.
This month, the dawn of a new and terrifying regime, I've been thinking about shells as a metaphor for politics. That is to say, I've been thinking about the seashell as a mutable and uncertain thing. When it is born, the shell belongs to one owner, who will wear it to death. That owner will mark the shell with evidence of its life - perhaps with dents or scrapes or scuffs, providing evidence of the shell's history. After its initial owner's death, the shell may be adopted by another, and this cycle will continue.
Eventually, the shell will wash up on some shore, perhaps thousands of miles from its origin. Here, it will be walked over, sat on, buried, unburied, reburied, and worn down. It may end up in some pedestrian pocket, or it may lay amongst other shells until it turns to sand. The shell does not know what it will become, but it remembers where it has been, through the marks on its back.
In the same vein, our political future is wildly uncertain. We can see evidence of the scars and marks of the past making themselves known - Roman salutes and commendation of genocide. These pocks are being worn deeper, threatening to snap the shell entirely, no longer able to be rehoused or pocketed by some wanderer.
I think of the shell's spiral, and does it start from the center or the periphery? I lack the wherewithal or scientific background to provide a solution, but when we are thinking of the shell as a political thing, we are on the periphery, balanced on the very outer edge.
Here, we have nowhere to go but outside of the shell entirely.