Chocolate Seashells

Sunrise. Diver. Aphrodite. Deep-Sea. Dayboat. Baby. Zig-Zag. Kitten’s Paw. Coquille. The Great.  Nucleus. Noble. Calico. Queen. Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.   Buddhist’s luck. Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. Lion’s Paw. Lakshmi. Cyprus Shore. Camino de Santiago. Mother-of-pearl. Weathervane. Proust’s madeleine in Swann’s Way. Heart-shaped.   The scallop shell: from form once-inhabited to sea-tumbled object, its shore-ward voyage is presided over by forces unknown . . . Perhaps it is this, the ‘passage-between-realms’ that gives shape to its being, that predestines the symbolic associations it carries; the scallop, it is said, will appear as way-marker to pilgrims along their journey, the shell’s grooves signaling various paths, all of which converge at the same sacred destination.   Chocolatemaking is our own form of spiritual pilgrimage, a calling both precious and deeply, deeply cultivated, each step of its process moving us forward in our perpetual quest for beauty. The ma