Wax Erotic
Meet the nautilus. Don't worry, this one is quite friendly—Nicilus Nautilus. Maybe so, maybe nautilus. He loves me. He loves me nautilus. Ready or nautilus, here he comes. Ho'oponopono.
Like any of its kin, Nicilus is always home. He swallows the monotony of never leaving the house with the poise of a master painter, for in fact he is a master painter. Thankfully the minerals Nicilus needs for his work are dissolved in the sea water he breathes. With the same patient devotion he demonstrates in coital bliss, Nicilus browses the sea for flecks of iridescence that will enrich his nacreous concoction of liquid aragonite. He laps this pearl paint about the windowsill, slightly more above than below, and slowly it curls and cures, coat after endless coat. In fact, it might be more apt to say that Nicilus lives in a coat rather than a house.
So the collar of his coat is always growing longer and rolling back, more to one side than its opposite, hence the golden spiral contour we observe. Nicilus gets so focused on his art that he sometimes forgets to eat for weeks at time, so the coat outgrows him, and to keep his ninety-some tentacles and beak at the rim he must gradually boost himself up with an air bubble. Eventually the bubble becomes so big that Nicilus finds himself pulled down toward the surface where it is too bright and noisy to focus on his work. Here sea turtles, octopi and triggerfish chomp, chisel, and gnaw at his precious coat. Nicilus prefers the calm dark deep above, and to tune his buoyancy he seals off a chamber below with a fresh septum—an interior membrane with a tiny gas valve. This way Nicilus can finely tune the pressure within the whole inwardly spiraling chain of previous chambers, diving to the depths as day comes and sinking to the surface in the dark of night.
Each chamber holds a memory of his growing body of work, reminding him of how he has honed his craft. When gnawed by turtle beaks or gnashed by sharks' teeth, Nicilus caulks and lacquers the cracks with liquid pearl. His ancient lineage perpetuates perhaps the oldest practice of kintsugi in our earthly realm.
A nautilus, trailing through midnight water, siphon drawing and releasing. Behind it: every home it has ever outgrown, sealed in nacre and held in the spiral, each chamber a perfect record of a smaller body. The new chamber opens ahead — roomier, the same shape, scaled by a ratio the nautilus did not choose and does not calculate. Growth moves by proportion. The draw predates decision.
When we get what we need and want, we grow. The old chamber does not disappear. The spiral holds it, buoyant with trapped gas, the weight of the past becoming ballast that keeps the present level.
What draws me? Every sealed chamber answers: this. Then this. Then this.