In the world I reside, a shell is my home. Ask how does the sunlight get in the walls of the body? It absorbs sunlight or the wall like the sun itself. Isn’t that too intense for the one who dwells there? Yes, it might be accurate, but no, the wall of the shell knows and feels my body’s needs, good without machinery, the natural machine with intelligence.
I’m not a tiny person living in a shell on the sands of a beach; it’s a giant resembling a True Tulip or Horse Conch. How does the shell get that large? Simple, there are giant sea snails. Actually, the craftsmen of our culture gradually learned to build them using natural processes; they discovered the secret of how to make a shell without the animal. They fool the body into believing an animal is growing within it. Forming itself through the materials given to it by nature, the surface gradually builds itself through the guidance of the craftsmen. They are deep in nature’s secrets from the birth of the shell to its final form.
Weird I heard the sounds of the ocean in my home but the walls were insulated from outside sounds yet I heard the distinctive tones of the ocean. Where I live I see the morning light. As the day lasts it has the same intensity. During the night the walls of the shell reflect the stars in yearly rounds and phases of the moon. It’s like a movie on my walls. With my cushions, bedding, a book to read, and moon clover wine, for the night I’m comfortable. Sometimes wailings of animal or something in the far distance frightens me, my shell home secures itself closing the entrance as if there wasn’t one. Like the oceans on the beach, my shell shuts out the other sounds. You ask about the bathroom, my shell sends down tubes or pipes to a tank to purify the mess then pumps it to the ocean. Water is collected from the rain and ocean, a machine pulls out the salt.
Near my living room I enter a circular room it seems to extend beyond the shell. It’s a forest, there all the things of the outside world are there, bugs, microbes, moss, fungus, small animals, birds, some larger ones like foxes, it includes a whole animal kingdom. I call my arboretum. There are no walls that contain it yet it’s part of my shell and being contained in its wall doesn’t make sense. It goes on as far as I walk, traveling up to a distance I look towards the horizon, there are still greater distances I’ve never been to. Fantastic! If you ask a question might I get lost, yes, so I make sure I put markers around to lead me back? I grow my vegetable, I have fruit trees, and in the ponds and rivers fish of all kinds to eat. For the rest, I go to the markets in the city of shells. In the city, each shell is a place to work and live. Merchants and craftsmen sell things whatever is needed to put together their stuff in an open area on the street where people would stroll around. They store stuff in an area of their shells. Materials were gathered at the neighboring forest. Yea, sometimes raw things are brought in from afar, a good exchange.
When the sun rises the walls of my shell lighten up letting me know it’s morning, I take my time so I think in bed maybe not ready to get up, stars things of light start shining on the walls telling me, “get up, time, get up.” You’ve guessed my visual alarm clock. It’s my home that is telling me to fight the day. My companion, and guide. For me breakfast is fish from the ponds or sea, eggs if available, and tea. The people are where the news comes from, the wall of the shell provides written words rolling across like a scroll, or voices. My living is through building shell homes and making notebooks. I design shell homes on my drawing board.
Before I go one thing to mention, the shell in which I live is a boat when it floods or when the ocean dominates I’m able to live on the ocean eventually navigating back to land.
