The blue glass is always the hardest to find. On the beach you catch the waves bringing back the glass from forgotten tossed bottles, frosted green, clear, or mottled pale brown. But the blue glass - that's the real thing.
I search for days without finding any. Sometimes there are slivers; other days, small chunks. Like a beachcomber, I comb the sands for it.
I take the glass home and make some into jewellery and touchstones for people to hang on to; pour essential oils on others so the scents waft heavenward and meld together with the glass to form a bond.
Words are like that. They can fuse with each other and ignite, or just quietly combine, On sunny days, I take my books with me to the beach. I toss words back and
forth in my mind, like churning waves. I cobble them together, A phrase here. A sentence there.
The water. The sun. The sand. The glass. The words. The paper. The Connection. I find myself enveloped in it all.
The glass is from bottles tossed into the surf by unthinking people - picnickers, vacationers, those who don't have to return here and live with the remnants of their actions. Over time, the broken glass is ground and moulded by the action of the waves; the sharp edges are softened and etched by the sand and water, The sea glass is washed up on shore and picked up by beachcombers. Some recycle it for other uses like me; others just keep it as a reminder of a day at the beach.
The words I sift through as I sit on the sand are measured in the sea glass. I pick each word up and look through it to see how much light shines through. What use do 1 have for it? A poem? An essay? A fragment of a sentence, for something to be said in the future? I watch the sun rest uneasily on its bed of water and slide slowly, farther down. I know the hot summer is coming to a close and I am loath to let go of the closeness I feel with nature.
I live to find the blue glass, and sometimes it just happens.
My search for Indian migrant women was like my quest for the blue glass. It was not an easy task. It became a process of rummaging through other people's lives, searching for fragments and relics. Eventually I was able to fit pieces together to form a mosaic of their lives in that other time, that other place. And also in this present time, in this place they now call home, Australia.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/217046 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | Kannan, Sharmini, mikewood@deakin.edu.au |
| Publisher | Deakin University. School of Communication and Creative Arts |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.deakin.edu.au/disclaimer.html), Copyright Sharmini Kannan |
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