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“Nothing is enough”

Clams raked from local waters, given freely to anyone with a rake and some time.

We had stumbled on a locals pub in Galway, away from the center of town, and we were still clumsily feeling our way in Ireland.

A waiter sensed our confusion, and took phenomenal care of us as we bumbled through the pub. A local pub has local people with local habits.

We wanted to tip, but did not know how much–people who work in pubs are not servants, and tipping in pubs is generally not done. So we asked, and she told us:

Nothing is enough.

And, of course, nothing is enough, and nothing is enough.

We need some things, true–decent food, clean water, safe shelter, and people we love. But most things we think we need are more than enough.

What we think we need defines who we are.
What we think we need separates humans from the other mammals.

Nonmember harvest

It’s OK to want more than you need; most of us do, and our culture’s economy depends on you doing just that.

Beyond our basic needs, knowing nothing is enough will, depending on how you read it, make life wonderful or make you miserable.



Sometimes knowing nothing is enough is enough to give you the world.

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Clamming in late autumn

They’re alive, just an hour or two after leaving the bay, and will be until they are cooked an hour or two later.

I am alive when I take this picture, and will be even after these particular clams are eaten.

Quahogs raked from the back bay in late November

The air is chilly in the shadows, but the water is still warm enough for sandals.

In a generation or two, different clams will fill the same basket, different hands will hold the same rake.

The shells of the clams above now sit under a maple tree outside, resting among the shards of so many other shells, all raked up alive, all eaten, all dead.

If you’re a high school teacher, here’s a macabre exercise that I think is worth doing once or twice a year. Wander out into the hallways in between the periods, when the kids are being kids, in varied kid positions, using kid slang.–walking/strutting/slouching/skipping/dancing/sliding with in your face vivaciousness .

Now imagine those same bodies a years after they are dead, their skeletal remains as lifeless as the ghostly white clam shells sitting under my maple tree.

Clam shells under the maple tree.

And then ask yourself, what are you doing today with these children whose lives are as mortal as the clams.

(Mortality should influence your curriculum at least as much as capitalism does….)

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Vibrations

Waves on the inner harbor of Honfleur (taken by Leslie)

I have been mostly deaf all of my life, so I pay more attention to sound waves than may be healthy.

For the same reason, I pay way too much attention to light waves as I stare at people’s lips as they talk.

I talk with the universal accent of the congenitally deaf, and a big piece of my learning how to talk was touching the throat of my mother as she taught me the various sounds people make when speaking English.

Waves in the Cape May inlet

I learned most of them, but I’m still struggling with “r”. Grrrr….

Waves allow us to know what’s going on with the things not actually touching us. (Well, sound waves are mechanical, so I guess one could argue that the air particles need to touch our ear drum, but the particles are not the wave.)

Basil flower on a winter windowsill

We do not observe waves directly–we see what our brains allow us to see, forms and sounds that keep our breathing bodies from quickly becoming carcasses.

Still, as I catch a glimpse of a patch of snow glinting in the optimistic light of a March sun, my eye converting waves of light that only I have seen, I realize how little any of us can know, and how much of the universe casually exists outside our senses, our imagination.

So I write about it, to no one in particular, for no particular reason.