The Lunar Gastropod Sings its Glory

I remember as a child watching octopi on nature programs, fascinated by their ability to change both shape and color, their brilliant minds adapting to a shape that had little or no fortitude against the environment. My mother also had a collection of glass animals, one of which was a green glass snail, ever present in my childhood. Nautili would come to me in dreams, and slugs were common in our temperate gardens.

The snail, however, was the mollusk to truly stand out for me, for their analogues to many alchemical concepts; Both hard and soft, with their bodies kept within a great container formed in a logarithmic spiral, hermaphroditic, and complete with four protruberances from its head similar to the four classical elements. Dimension-snails would slowly ooze their way through my work, sometimes croaking out haunting melodies from blue throats. Reflections of their shells and heads would sometimes reverberate through both my ear canal and throat respectively, and loud choirs of shell organs bellowing steam would herald their arrival to impart great secrets.