As long as the seashell lives with it’s insides hues of brilliant unmatched colors , as on feathers of certain wild ducks,
the seeshell may harbor a precious pearl inside.
I love a challenge and a mystery but sometimes you really need resolution.
The below are the words which are boggling my mind.
Where in the universe can something be climbed yet at the same time be descended? My eyes were closed a lot this weekend trying to conjure up the scene.
Perhaps it would take a physicist to unravel this. Once known, I intuit that the seashells would also be explained.
I thought of a Tsunami for some unknown reason. I also thought of the Great Barrier Reef.
Is it possible that there is NO answer to this? After all, there is great beauty in trying to discern the Mystery.
Maybe it is not so much about the rungs of seashells but about Who is doing the speaking. Well, duh, arc.
Perhaps it is the Sun which is speaking. As it makes its ascent upward through the sky (climbing mountains), its reflection descends deeper and deeper through that watery abyss touching those rungs of seashells.
I do so love a riddle.
I may be wrong but think of it. Beautiful imagery.
I initially thought of the ear, way back when… sound waves travelling through the inner ear, just before it hits our auditory nerve, where the brain then interprets it as sound.
That’s the only thing that has ever come to mind upon reading Jonquil’s riddle.
Is this endless cascade of descent have a plan, a purpose?
A master sang: plan of sorts which, upon examination one summer’s child in some inconceivable time and place. On finding one sea shell,
Glitter, and Gotterdamerung, glorious
And he exclaims wondering,
Tiny hands extending it upward,
Just beginning to speak,
See, shell, prying it open , glitters multifarious coloring one lovely pearl,
Mom, dad look;
And the object is torn from the womb ,
She pains eternal,
And there on the faint outskirts,
the woman rose, from the half shell
She,
From the sea,
See?
A fly buzzes in the stunning vapor within hissing , he lets it crawl over his arm deliciously , he won’t bite,
slither tentatively,
It tickles , and that’s enough proof he thinks in his little mind,
The pearl is lodged
Never to leave
Dutch
man
A wind chime caught in the wind, perhaps… hanging from the branch of a mountain-top tree… the constant mountain breeze causing the chimes to constantly swirl in its grip… it, constantly cascading down the rungs of chiming shells and back up again, only to repeat the pattern in a never-ending circumstance of an engineered causality by design.
I am beginning to think that the riddle is just a tool to teach one detachment.
It not only captivates, it constrains. lol
Perhaps before we go to sleep, we repeat the words to ourselves, imagine climbing mountains, then descend …
At some point maybe our unconscious will reveal the answer. But then again, perhaps what it is within which holds us captivated is more meaningful than the answer itself.
I had thought that too Arc, that the riddle was not a means to a solvable end, but simply constructed for its beauty and prose, but that is not Jonquil…
My two solutions that initially came to mind upon first reading the riddle are: the ear/hearing, and a wind-chime.
An expanded description of my solution to the riddle:
A wind chime caught in the wind, perhaps… hanging from the branch of a mountain-top tree… the constant mountain breeze causing the chimes to constantly swirl in its grip… it, constantly cascading down the rungs of chiming shells and back up again, only to repeat the pattern in a never-ending circumstance of an engineered causality by design.