Beach Glass

Writing requires that you spend a lot of time in your head—the Coen Brothers called it “the life of the mind” in their funny, frightening movie, Barton Fink. Sometimes it gets a little stultifying in there, crawling through the narrow openings and smacking into the walls of my own thoughts, and I have to find ways to clear my head out. I walk a couple miles on the beach, I do 45 minutes of yoga, I stage a symbolic cleaning of other cluttered spaces, like my T-shirt drawer, shoe shelves, or linen closet. Lately, I’ve added a component to my walks along the Balboa Peninsula: collecting beach glass.

When I scan the deposits of rock and shell for a certain shade or telltale glint of glass, I have an extra diversion from thought. All that goes through my head is, “Is that a piece of glass? Is that? Is that?” I suppose it transforms into a mantra after a while, the whole act of hunting beach glass a meditation. There’s the clink of the shards in my sweatshirt pocket, the heft of them, like coins with no value except that I’ve found them.

Home from my walk, I rinse the varied specimens, and lay them out on a paper towel to dry. I tinker with them, arranging them like parts of an inexact puzzle. They are ordinary objects the sea has broken up, tumbled, spit out and turned into art.

I’m ready to write again.