April 11, 2004
#65 :: Sea glass
The kharmic simplicity of sea glass is staggering, if you think about it for too long in a stoned-sort-of "... Whoa ... " manner. Made from - essentially - melted sand, glass is poured, blown, molded and fused into bottles that we use to carry beers to the beach which, when enough of them are drunk around the fire, are flung back into the ocean to shatter on the rocks, where the sea and the sand slowly massage and corrode them into pearlescent little artifacts that - left uncollected, eventually dissolve back into sand. No chemicals enter the process, but for the trace residue of beer or schnapps or milk of magnesia (seablasted cobalt blue glass was the rarest and most glorious of finds when we were young) that is washed away by the sea. It is a process of wilful, combative manufacture, first by man, then by the ocean. Or perhaps it's the other way around. I can't recall where I found this piece. As sea glass goes, it's nothing remarkable, probably an old-fashioned green Coke bottle. But I've had it forever.