What do you see when you aim to stop looking?
Kelly and I are standing, ankle-deep, in rising surf, watching. The water slinks past our feet, and as the ocean reclaims it, we stare where the sand is pulled back. “Look for the darkest black, a color that doesn’t shine but absorbs all the light,” she says. “Don’t focus on shape.”
Before me, tens of thousands of little objects glimmer in a glaring noon-sun light, remnants of an entire civilization of bivalve mollusks whose crusty shell-houses have been thrown upon the beach, crushed by relentless waves and the heavy footsteps of beachcombers, and scattered across the sand. There is an astonishing spectrum of color: pink, indigo, purple, rust-red, and on occasion even hints of yellow.
We are looking for shark teeth, perhaps my wife’s favorite and most notorious beachtime hobby. I stare downward at the sand, pacing my breath, tempering my synapses. Thousands of shell fragments. Don’t focus on shape, I repeat, even as my brain impulsively picks out triangles. I see nothing. Kelly reaches down and scoops out a fossilized tooth, black as night. Rather, another one. She has a pocketful.
