SEA STARS

I was walking across the beach as the sea was pulling out. I looked over the sand towards the Villa’s white façade. My eyes followed the grass path through the garden of coconut trees to my studio. I found the studio by the glint of sun off the sea windows.

I saw myself standing there watching me as I walked towards the shoreline.

My skin crawled, cross currents running down my back creating diamond snakeskin patterns. My first reaction to fear was fight not flight. I waved at myself but I did not respond. I, myself in the studio window stood motionless watching me wave and then slowly waved back.

By the time I reached the high tide line my studio was obscured by the Sea Almond that stood before the beach gate. I left the T-shirt I was carrying filled with Sea Stars in a basket I had found washed up on the shore. I turned away from the Villa and ran to catch the water rolling out towards the horizon. I did not look back towards the studio windows. 

The sea was warm and shallow around my feet so I waded out to catch depth, where turquoise met ultramarine. I flipped onto my back to look at the sky. I closed my eyes to think about myself in the studio. A deep alizarin rose edged with gold filled a sightless vision. Its pattern was the same as that drawn on the Sea star’s face, a perfectly imperfect symmetry radiating from a five-point star arranged around a central circle. The pattern disappeared into an infinite space of fading yellow with a burning white line running along its centre. I was in outer-space looking back at the milky-way, suddenly out of my depth. I snapped open my eyes to find the beach line and saw that I was in exactly the same place I had been moments before. The tide had turned and the sea was making its way to land. I sloughed back through the returning tidal shallows, across the rippled surface of sand and collected the basket filled with Sea Stars and headed to the studio to confront myself.

Of course, I was not there. I looked around for any signs of myself but found none, that is, until I opened my sketchbook and there drawn in Hb pencil was the pattern of a Sea Star’s face. I turned to the basket that I had set down on the studio floor. I found every Sea Star that I had collected, broken into pieces.

Cassiduloids, irregular echinoids emerged from the Jurassic. In the Paleocene true sand dollars arose. During the Eocene the truly modern Sand Dollar or Sea Star became itself. Its rigid skeleton is called a test and is made of five plates of calcium carbonate arranged in a five-fold radial symmetry. The creature’s mouth is at the centre of the underside of its body. Its anus is located below its mouth. The Sea Star is neither male nor female but rather both and can asexually reproduce. It can also clone itself when sensing danger. If you break open a Sea Star’s skeleton, the test, you will find five white butterflies at its core.

As I knelt beside the basket a cloud of white butterflies flew up, released from their chalky debris. I ran to the studio windows and opened them wide. The shell butterflies flew around the space and then out of the windows in a silent flock, spilling tiny grains of sand and salt into my eyes before dispersing into the sky over the sea. 

I looked down at the beach and there I saw myself wading through the shallows, collecting Sea Stars.