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19 hours ago
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Last Sunday, while I was walking along a coastal path in Sydney, I was stopped in my tracks by a marvel. It was first noticed, as these things often are, by a small boy who was walking with me. Look at that! We both stopped and gazed at the marvel.
It sat on a low sandstone rock near the edge of the sea. We squatted down to examine it more closely. It was only a walking boot, but it was laced delicately all over the back and sides and tongue, and even the rim of the sole, with small white conical seashells, as if someone had stitched the shells into the fabric. The shells’ bright whiteness was tinged with a faint pink and there was a dark narrow opening where, with careful observation, we could see in each shell a soft living creature.
Each shell must have attached itself as the boot lay on the sandy bottom of the sea, forming over many months a colony of creatures on this strange new sea architecture. The boot was still damp and prettily sprinkled with sand and must have been cast up from the depths on to the shore the stormy night before.
The Tempest came to mind:
Full fathom five thy father lies/ Of his bones are coral made/ Those are pearls that were his eyes/ Nothing of him that doth fade/ But doth suffer a sea change/ Into something rich and strange.
The boy had heard of Shakespeare but was more interested in testing how firmly the shells were attached. I wondered aloud about the owner of the boot, but its origins were of no concern to the boy. It was the boot covered in shells, the object itself, so rich and strange, that enchanted. It was a true marvel. Neither of us had seen anything like it before in all our varying decades.
It has made me wonder, what qualifies as a marvel? And why do we seek them out?
Marvels are usually pointless, that is, not useful in the functioning of everyday life. They cannot normally be set to work, or made into a tasty dish, or sold. And yet we long for them. I think of other marvels I have come upon: a flat stone in an almost exact shape of Australia, a fountain frozen solid in mid spray, a church entered through a rock crevice, eight puppies born in the car shed, an origami crane held by a spider’s thread above the window sill; a megalithic tomb made of quartz; each one of them I could not do without, but none of them are practically useful to me.
Marvels must have, too, a quality of randomness, although we often try to order them. The crowds that arrived to see tigers in the Place des Vosges in Paris, the hundreds of people sitting on clifftops along the coast watching for whales, the travellers gathering on a stony ridge in Kakadu to watch the sun go down over the wetlands – all are expecting a marvel. But you can’t necessarily book or buy tickets to see a marvel. There are marvels in museums and galleries and at famous sites and natural wonders, but neither the Mona Lisa nor a Kakadu sunset, nor Niagara Falls qualify as marvels because they are expected. Marvels must be encountered randomly, although there is a knack to putting oneself in a situation where a marvel might occur.
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And beauty? Most marvels are beautiful, but it is not an absolute requirement. Some marvels are merely “rich and strange”: a swallow’s nest made of knobbly mud, a tadpole with four legs and a tail, an Irish cave with holy cards and faded flowers stuck to the walls. And even the lovely shell-encrusted boot a friend said was “gross”. Instead of beauty, a marvel needs to have originality and rarity, something quite like this never seen before.
But why do we long for, search for, marvels? Why do we respond to them with such deep pleasure? It must be partly an aesthetic pleasure, the desire for beauty, but there is something else, something to do with a gift that cannot be ordered and paid for. The fact it is randomly bestowed is crucially important – it means we all have equal access to the random gifts, and blows, of the gods.
I used to think the desire for transcendental wonders was the residue of a religious upbringing – I was promised angels, endless fire, rising from the dead – but the boy has had no such fabulous stories shaping his perceptions and still he pays as much attention, or more, to the wonders that land on our path.
It could be childhood training, being taught by our parents or grandparents to pay attention to curiosities. I’ve spent many hours showing the boy what must be noticed as we walk across the world – bats hanging upside down in the paperbark swamp, water dragons lying perfectly still, a man playing a harp at the market. In turn, I was shaped by the Argonauts, a 20th century radio club for children, which had us vow: “Before the sun and the night and the blue sea, I vow to stand faithfully by all that is brave and beautiful; to seek adventure, and having discovered aught of wonder, or delight; of merriment or loveliness, to share it freely with my comrades ... ” It was a solemn vow to spend one’s life to searching for and sharing marvels, which even now seems to me a reasonable enough life aim. Yet most of the world have never been Argonauts and still have a love of marvels.
There must be something innate in the desire for and recognition of what is rare, random, extraordinary. Years ago in Paris I saw an artwork which resembled a pinball machine, a wooden box on legs with a glass top, but inside it, instead of the usual levers and ricocheting ball, there was a tiny figure of a man in a bleak landscape, pushing against a high wooden gate. We, the viewers looking from above, could see there was a beautifully made paradise on the other side of the door. The door moved a little inwards each time the man pushed, but never opened. I wondered how the man knew there was beauty and wonder on the other side.
It seems it must be a part of human DNA, the chemical bases as yet unmapped, to search for and be delighted by marvels. One day scientists will discover the exact sequence, somehow evolved in us for who knows what purpose, which causes us to be delighted and astonished by marvels. I gaze at the sea boot and touch one of the laced shells. Something expands in my solar plexus; for a moment the world is more extraordinary than I could have imagined.
Patti Miller is the author of the books Writing True Stories and True Friends.
