Friends came over the week before last. We hunted along the beach. My friend found an actual piece of red on the beach, my beach, and when I gasped and raved abour how rare it was, she said, “Here, you can have it.”
“Oh no, no I can’t,” I said. “You found it. It is yours.” Red. Real and softened by the ocean. It is a first. Thrilling and exciting. I hadn’t even thought of a red find on my beach as possible. I say my beach the way I say my street but I own neither.
Then, the next week, my daughter’s play group comes over. One woman is a sea glass lover. She is determined to find purple or blue. I find a purple and I go to give it to her. “No,” she says, “It’s not the same if I don’t find it myself.” She’s stubborn and determined for every aspect of the journey to be hers. She will find what she finds or not but the bag she brings home will represent the gems she discovered.
With my brother and newphews, I shared. My brother and newphews went around the dining room table one at a time after drawing sticks to see who would pick first and decide who would get what. They didn’t care if they found the pieces. They love the glass and the hunting and the entire experience, including the sharing of pieces. Besides, I told them, “I can hunt any time.” They are hours from a beach. They picked their peices, hoping no one would get the one they each had an eye for. It was fun and they left happy and excited.
My daughter found an orange and she was not sharing any of her pieces. The orange, another rare find, stunned me. It was tiny, as small as a child’s pinky nail. BUt it is glass, not plastic. I asked if she wanted to put it someplace special or if she wanted me to hold it. This morning she realized it was lost. She didn’t know where it was. “What if the cat ate it?”” she said. I thought, “I’m glad the edges are really soft.” I said, “We might be able to find it.”
I couldn’t say, “We’ll buy another one. We’ll find another one.” There are no such promises with natural gems.
But the bigger lesson for me is in how different we all are. I have one friend opening her own sea glass jewelry business and another this morning, a neighbor, who told me she is going to sell jewelry too. Who owns ideas? Who has the market on creativity? How do business collaboratons stay collegial when money makes friends competitors? And can’t colleagues bail each other out, help each other flourish, spread word of each other’s ventures?
We are all different. My brother isn’t wrong to take and keep a purple from me. My friend is not wrong to want to find her own pieces or go home without a purple. Some of us don’t want to do things unless we do them ourselves, our own way. Some of us want to go off trail in the woods and others want to follow the red marks on the trees advising, “This is still the trail.”
I am learning to examine and challenge and define for myself my own ideas about business ethics, artistic ethics, concepts of universality – that nothing is original and unique – and seeing what I bump up against in myself with myself and with others. Sometimes the journey is comfortable and exhilarating. Other times, I find myself at the other end of a sea saw when I thiough I was swinging. Art is personal. Business has rules. But we all figure out what our own spaces and places are. It’s becoming less and less about right and wrong, ownership and copying, it’s becoming more about deciding what kind of artist and business person I want to be.
Can I say thank you when handed an orange I didn’t find? Or do I need to find it myself? Will I sometimes take pleasure in the gifts given and on another part of the same day need to journey alone?
I found my daughter’s orange. She will be pleased. She lost it alone. I helped her find it. Does that interfere with her journey or just bring her great relief?
It’s a process not an argument, it’s a pondering, not a persuasive essay. In all things, including business and art, seeking and searching for sea glass or “the mystery some call God,” there are books and guides, advice and practices but for each one of us it’s an individual journey. Will I be someone who makes a living making seaglass jewelry or tire of it in six months and give away all my supplies? Will I get craft tables and join a jeweler’s collective or will I say, in ten years, “remember that wild phase?” and how I freaked out and panicked when others stepped out into their own business? How I worried about saturating the market more than enriching the friendships at times?
Catch of the Day: Nothing is without complexity and complication and life. My daughter is messy, mud-covered from her ankles to her armpits when she comes home from camp. “I love it she says, except for the bug bites.” And nothing, no spray or tonic or secret elixir keeps anything perfect and sacred and without bug bites without work and practice and ownership of one’s own ego. To be private and playful and expansive with artistic ideas is wonderful. To mix in commerce and selling and business… I want to figure out how to do that in a way that doesn’t kill the joyful aspects of creation. As with writing, there are kinds that make money and kinds that don’t but the heart cares little about all that. I’d love to say I’ll keep personal and professional apart but the creation of art and the selling of it IS personal and professional. Another new aspect to the journey. I’m less freaked and more intrigued by the process. We’ll see what happens next….
SEA GLASS ARTS with Sea Glass Girl 
