I always get a special feeling when events and circumstances, names, numbers and symbols make sense in my life.  For the doubting Ute it is ultimate intellectual proof for something I emotionally know to be true, namely, that All That Is, everything, you and I are truly intimately and lovingly connected with each other.  So I would like to share a story with you, my dear other selves, a story that happened and happens to many of us every single day, if we but look for it.  For it is only when we look at the seemingly unimportant events that the real stories unfold and that we get the surprises of our life.  I've always been one for surprises.

Though I know I'm the prop-man, the producer, the actor and the spectator of the show, and that I'm playing more than one role at the same time, I also thoroughly enjoy playing the detective whose sole role it is to discover himself behind the whole show. So, please forget what I've just told you – and try to follow the story as one who knows nothing of his true self, or selves, so you can see how I must have been surprised at what happened to me, lately, with regards to some shells.

Not more that a year ago, I met Grete and Gilbert Perleberg, a German couple, who for years have been publishing the RUNDBRIEF, a German literary zine in which readers write letters, articles, poetry, or simply share their ideas with each other.  It is a link between West and East Germany where it is especially appreciated.

On my last visit to Grete Perleberg – she died on October 11, 1986 – she insisted on giving me some of her shells.  “You must take them, they're from home."  With that, she pressed them into my palm, tiny beautiful sea shells with intricate colorful designs and patterns.  Her house was full of them.  There were even two shell mobiles hanging from the ceiling.  I felt her precious shells in my hand and waited.  She had already gone two, three times to pick out those she wanted me to have when, suddenly, she went back again, the tiny elf-like woman in her eighties.  From out of a collection of shells on the windowsill she took a few, examined them from all sides, only to put them back down again.  Finally she was satisfied with her choice.  “Here, take this one too.”  I could feel the warmth that streamed through my fingers as she added yet another shell to those already in my hand.  This one contained her love for me. I would never see her again.

At home, I could not but marvel at the beauty of every single shell.  But there was one that took my breath away.  It has thin rings of purple, brown, yellow, green and orange in addition to some of undetermined color.  I am sure that one could, were one to separate the latter into basic colors, find all the colors of the rainbow represented.  Seven or eight wide rings of antique white separate the fine rings from each other.  One shell in pure white is in the shape of a unicorn's horn, another is dotted and has a smooth natural glaze.  Two others have significance for me also and shall propel me into libraries to find their names and origin.  This will, I am sure, result in more work for the detective.

A few weeks after my visit to Grete, I came upon a little store with exquisite, mostly hand-wrought, things.  Among them, on a round table, or was it a shelf – the detective only always sees one, and he's the only one who insists on using words, symbols and numbers anyway, so that he can look behind them – there was a small rectangular box.  It was made of citron-colored mother-of-pearl.  Its cover sported a shell almost the size of the cover itself whose rim, as well as the four corners of the box, were lined and welded together with a copper-like metallic substance.  A veritable treasure!  A pearl for Grete Perleberg’s shells. Perleberg means mountain of pearls, by the way.  There was only one hitch.  The tiny thing cost all of 42 dollars.  How could I possibly justify buying it?  The detective could.  “6x7=42" is your favorite multiplication.”  And it was true.  It had been the only one that had never given me trouble as a child while all the others invariably did.  And besides, nothing was too good for Grete's shells.  The detective opened the box, looked inside and saw himself.  The bottom of the little box consisted of a mirror.

That night, when I called my friend Catherine Dvorak to tell her about my newfound treasure, she told me that our dear friend Grete had closed her physical eyes forever at precisely the time when I found this most suitable home for her shells.  At the memorial service Uta Dreher who, with her husband Michael, took over as publishers of the Rundbrief asked me to write something for the next issue of the zine to honor our friend in our native tongue.  As I sat at the typewriter, the mail came and with it the beautiful blue summer issue of Tam Mossman's elegant magazine METAPSYCHOLOGY and with it SHELLS, SHELLS, SHELLS. I counted thirty in all, including the title page, phenomenal X-ray shell photographs by Dorothy Colles.  Looking down, I saw more shells.  Inevitably, I had donned my two year old house dress with shells upon shells in various vibrant colors including pure white against a background of black.

And the story goes on.  On October 28, 1986, I opened a checking account in my name.  One of the patterns was a shell design.  But that isn't it.  They make, after all, stamp books with shells, dresses with shells – I picked a shelly wallpaper for my new little bathroom on the first floor.  If I don't soon cool it I’ll have my whole household shell-shocked;  as it is, they only know the half of it.  But this was too much.  There it was!  Right on the sample check!  The unusual shell, the one with the rings that look as if they were painted on.  My favorite on the sample for MY shell design?  I should have known.

And another thing:  I had told someone that I also work with names, among others those containing the letters –ian, or -jan as in Jane, - Armenian names invariably end in –ian – when I was made to realize that –iansounds a little like I am.  As it happened, I had written two poems with just that title, one in German, one in English. Imagine my surprise when I came home and looked into my temporary checkbook.  The teller, who has known me for years – we all have our accounts in that bank – had spelled my name UTE KABOLIAM, in red ink  whereas she had written the date in black.  As an exclamation point?  I did get the message.

On November 7, 1986, I received my new checks.  I held the real shell against the printed one. They were identical as to color and number of rings.  Identical, but were they really?  For as I hold the shell in my hand once again and carefully follow the seemingly separate rings with my finger, I realize that by doing so I end up turning the shell around and around like a top, while the rings are a spiral, unbroken, from one end to the other.  The printed shell is an illusion. So is the shell itself, when glanced at superficially and seen from one angle only.  Then the rings are, indeed, separate from each other, interspersed as they are with white.

And all of a sudden, I sense great symbolism, so much thought-provoking symbolism, in such a tiny shell that it invariably serves as a trigger for Detective Ute to pursue the next clue with ever more attention to detail and to literally leave no trace of traces uncovered to find the ace of aces in the whole or hole. In my heart of hearts I know I shall (shell?). I leave the rest to the reader's imagination. It helps to know German here. In that language the adjective of the English noun light is ‘hell’, as in shell. And that does have significance for me. As a six year old in our garden I stood in light in, of all places, Berlin, Germany.  It was the most wonderful experience I have ever had.  There was only the white light.  No world.  No body.  Only pure joy and no time or space.  IT was a timeless moment.  IT is already here. The spark has been struck.  We shall strike it again – and again- until we succeed, and until the whole grand tree of life blazes with the light of love and understanding.