Two

Please take a look at the work of Michael Graff, from N.C.’s Our State. (Thanks, Sarah)

The Oyster Way: Down in the mud in the North Carolina sounds,the oyster finds a home and sticks with it. It will never move, not even to do the one thing that makes just about any creature move — not even to mate. Each spring, when the water hits 68 degrees, and not a degree sooner, without even the slightest courtship effort, the male releases his sperm into the water, and the female releases her eggs, putting it all to chance that somewhere in the sea they will meet and make a new oyster. The offspring, larva so small that a million can fit in a cupped human hand, sways along the surface for a few weeks before realizing that floating just isn’t the oyster way. It dives down to the bottom to search for something solid to stick to forever — preferably another oyster shell — where it will stay and grow and never again have to worry about the wild uncertainties of locomotion.

From that fixed spot, anything that happens in the oyster’s life is the result of outside influence. Food falls to it. Predators nose around it. Storms wash its world away. A life of such permanence demands a hard shell. The oyster, for 520 million or so years, survived this way, growing one on top of the other on top of the other.

And then we came along.

And Where The Road Ends: In a town built on sand, past where the paved road ends, with million-dollar beach homes everywhere, a man points a gun at a horse. His name — the man’s — is Wesley Stallings. Her name — the horse’s — is Tzila. They are both parents, man and horse, of young girls. Stallings has a 6-year-old at home; they eat pizza on Fridays together. Tzila has a yearling here; they eat a lot of grass together.

Among their other common traits, the man and horse are resigned to the way things are out here. Cars drive on the beach. Homes are so big they have names. And people walk right up to horses and snap pictures as if it were the zoo.

That’s why Stallings has his gun pointed at Tzila. It’s not to hurt her, not at all.

(Soundtrack)