Elections are taking shape on the horizon, clouds rolling east across the prairies to Washington. There’s threat of downfall. As the weather turns in a divided nation, politicians offer sound bite pearls to crowds at state fairs, deliver elegies of puritan promises, and encourage dreamers. Torrential rain is forecast all along DC’s Potomac estuary, where saltwater meets fresh—a haven for oysters. The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, sitting not far from the oyster beds, is supplied with water from the Tidal Basin, a manmade structure that uses tides to flush silt and sediment from the Washington Channel. Through the changing colors of the storm, Lincoln gazes—one fist clenched in determination, the other resting open on the chiseled icons of justice and union in his limestone seat—waiting for the tide.
In its translucence, the water that captures his attention holds multitudes—from silt to shellfish, plankton to power. We think of water’s power as rushing waves, but greater still is its transmuting nature. H2O is the universal solvent, over time rendering almost any solid into liquid assets ready to be shaped to different purpose. Water attracts molecules through polarity, its force of attraction a lopsided structure of positively charged hydrogen and negatively charged oxygen. Its form makes H2O electron-greedy, pulling in energy. Our brains are 95% water, our muscles almost as much. Pulled by a dividing charge, what seems inalienable can flow into polarized beliefs. The effect, as it has been said, then can become the cause, with power to dissolve even an informed electorate into waves of frenzy.
To examine the lingering influence of life’s aquatic origins in us, consider both what tidal basins produce, and the nature of water itself. Nitrates, chlorates, and acetates of metals are all soluble in water. Chlorides and bromides reform themselves at the slightest drop. Water produces powerful solutions. Virtually all of them are infused with one of the most common minerals on earth: calcium carbonate.
At the bottom of the food chain, calcium carbonate is the go-to housing material. Its most abundant source is plankton shells. Eaten alive by krill canvasing the depths, the indigestible parts of plankton are excreted in a continuous stream of liquid limestone. So much is processed that we down a dose with every glass of water we drink. At the scale of our entire ecosystem, consider that four percent of the Earth’s crust is krill poop. Over time, calcium carbonate seeps into the groundwater, rising through roots that bear the food on our tables. It is the principal ingredient in eggshells, antacids, blackboard chalk, and marble.
Given their mass and the reach of their habitat, plankton are constantly preyed upon. Oysters—astute filter feeders—seek out the currents that keep our shores vibrant. Attuned to the tides, a mature oyster feeds on plankton by filtering two gallons of water an hour. Growing fat on their base food, they leave behind emptied individual shells in landslides rivaling the chalk Cliffs of Dover. Oysters reproduce by broadcast spawning between spring and early November, then transform into whatever mating partner is needed to dominate the landscape. Look for them in brackish waters where the elements of place, time, and tide come together just so. That’s where their beds form. Lincoln looks out near those of the Potomac, but they form as far afield as the mouth of the Amazon and the coasts of the Levantine Basin and Black Sea.
A bivalve, the oyster has a two-part hinged shell that surrounds a simple invertebrate. Its body is mostly muscle so this shellfish strongman can contract to protect its vulnerable digestive system and reproductive organs. But an oyster must expose itself to the currents to survive, its body no longer unassailable. When feeding, irritants can find hold inside their shells, can embed themselves in the complexity of gonads. So disturbed, the filter feeders excrete nacre, encapsulating the bothersome bit in layer after layer of iridescent calcium carbonate so the body politic can support it. With its thin covering the flaw takes on the glow of duplicity and is turned into something we admire, rendered in the shiny lie of a pearl. Krill poop makes filter feeders shine. They are famous for it.
So powerful is the pearl’s allure that for thousands of years people have risked their lives to acquire these beads of shimmer. As valued in the West as in the East, they have adorned kings and emperors, pharaohs and pharisees, sultans and maharajahs. But mollusks are sensitive creatures, their fragile core susceptible to even subtle changes in the waves. One in 10,000 oysters yields a pearl. Of those produced, one round enough to roll calls us to attention. Those pearls have an authoritative glow, casting their own self-evident light—known in the trade as their orient—a mesmerizing appropriation. With no need for cutting or polishing, seers, shamans and alchemists have long been drawn to their controlling influence, frequently stringing them together. To demonstrate her power, Cleopatra famously ate them to impress Antony, securing an empire.
Their orient calls us at once to wear, worship and swallow them whole. Ramesses II—the bygone ruler Ozymandias who commands us to look on his works and despair—received them from foreign rulers seeking to influence trade. In medieval times, they shouted authority on regalia. All who beheld them understood divine right bejeweled the wearer. Baldwin II, the last Latin Emperor to rule from Constantinople, had them sewn into his bedding so that while sleeping his saintly skin would not touch base cloth. Across caliphate and Christendom, sultans and kings alike, with balls of nacre and turgid mace, drew power from the masses. Louis IX used them to finance the idolatry of Paris as the new Jerusalem, coating himself in a halo of propaganda, consecrating himself as Saint Louis. Passed down from wearer to wearer over generations, pearls rung the throats of the Medici in a long string of popes. The Dutch guilds sailed the trade routes, riding the waves of commerce, exchanging them for stores of silk and spice, sugarcane and men. In the Holy Quran, those who believe will be adorned with pearls in gardens of perpetual residence. For the Hindu, pearls are dewdrops that fall into moonlit oceans to be plucked from the waters by Krishna. In the Bible, twelve gates, each a colossal pearl, are the doors of the new Heaven through which the true believer will pass. Common to all holy books, these calcium carbonate-coated balls are exalted above all gems save wisdom, which is more difficult to cultivate than power or pearls.
Pearls are 96% calcium carbonate and 4% water. Their luster comes from their water content. The gloss fades when pulled from the currents and dried in the light. The surface of the once shiny bead is then easily scratched. Like desiccated pearls, sound bites in the light of scrutiny lose their orient, no longer roll. Strongman regalia shimmers only with the credence we give it. Etched in Lincoln’s limestone seat is the message of his gaze: truth is the best vindication. Like water, knowledge is a universal solvent, able to transmute calcified thoughts into new solutions. Even the biggest of lies yields to the tide.
