Mollusk Graveyard

         Call me queer or old fashioned, but I am seldom happier than when crawling on my hands and knees on my favorite beach (its specific location shall remain a secret) along the Sonoma Coast collecting seashells and the calcified exoskeletons of bygone mollusks that I may or may not use in a sculpture one day.   I feel guilty doing this because not only should be at work assiduously addressing more pressing matters, but also because I am a grown man crawling on the beach like a little kid scrutinizing beautiful shells and the fragmented remnants of dead sea creatures.  At the very least I should be at home writing.  I wonder to myself when I will stop this behavior.  If I live long enough to be an old man, will I still be looking for shells on the beach (assuming the ecology of the seas remains stable) when I need a cane to walk?  I hope so, for between now and then I’d like to see some of these sculptures and other projects into fruition. But ultimately, even if it doesn’t work out, I’m grateful that I’ve had such an extraordinary run.  Thanks to all the flora and fauna that have and continue to enrich add meaning to our lives, and without which we'd all be dead, like these seashells and mollusks (scroll over to right or left click):