My sister asked me to bring her shells from Costa Rica. She had collected them years ago at Playa Langosta. We were heading to nearby Tamarindo, so I could find the same type of shells with little holes in them. What is it about an assignment? We give them to ourselves, they are given to us, they are sometimes ignored, or perhaps incomplete, but they move us forward. I must have always like the idea as during a recent closet purge I found my own baby book, and there inside was an early note written to Santa, I had asked for a workbook. What an odd request, but this must have come at the time we loved “playing school”, and I like the idea of completing assignments.

 

The seashell assignment is well underway and it was a gift. We biked to the area of beach where shells crunched under our tires and we began our search. It occurred to me that tomorrow there will be all new and different shells in this same location, or maybe just slightly further down the beach.

 

Every seashell is an amazing structure created by millions of years of evolution to protect a soft creature from predators and the crushing forces of the salty waves and water pressure. Different demands influence the designs. And the design follows the golden mean, or the Fibonacci sequence. A number is found by adding up the two numbers before it. It is ratio seen in the nautilus shell, in the honeycomb of the bee, and also in the geometry of Greek architecture.

 

The seashells are lined up on my balcony railing to dry, they vary in color and size and would be lovely to paint, but can one improve upon nature? According to Hegel it is the filter and passage through the mind that transforms the seashell and adds the emotion and insight given by the human spirit. So perhaps I’ll give it a go.

 

The shells will come home only as painted images. They have all gone back to the beach. I did my assignment and then I sent them all back into the ocean. Costa Rica likes it that way.