How purple the shells on a Vancouver beach on a rainy day.

After "Night Sea, 1963" by Victoria Chang

On this beach, my happiness doubles because the shells are more than I can count. A part of me is afraid to pocket even one.

Is this how people fall in love with the seasons? Change blows in and out and the trail of happiness stretches on, purple as rain.

It is too much to pocket. It is too much happiness to ever retrace. Still, I left some shells where the future can find them. I nudged one under the driftwood with my toe. I tossed a few purple discs to the seals and they caught them whole. The ocean kept winking happiness onto shore.

A thin, blonde woman waded into the cold ocean in a wetsuit. Her friend waited on a log, holding the woman’s comb and a green shopping bag stuffed with purple shells. The woman’s wetsuit turned to pelt and she flipped over the waves, waving flippers at us, seal grin. Here is the secret of skins: our happiness isn’t all on land. What else do the seals know?

I still have my happiness but parts of it have begun to migrate onto ordinary things, like your tiny kitchen. The baby potatoes slow cooking in butter and smoked paprika. The collar of your mulberry coat. The mud gathering at the borders of my shoes. The way you tilt my face upwards and there they are — beautiful, chaotic — flocks of birds. •

Painting made with foraged inks: walnut ink and privet berry. Made by Maaike VanderMeer, 2025.

Today’s lyric essay attempt to bring selkies (ancient Gaelic stories about women who turn into seals) into a short piece on happiness. Its structure comes from a poem by Victoria Chang:

“In this room, my loneliness doubles because the edges of the painting are no longer white . . . I still have my soul, but parts of it have begun to migrate.” (“Night Sea, 1963”)

There’s a writing prompt in the chat. <3

I’m sending this out much later in the day than usual because I’m working from Uganda and still getting reacquainted with the mercy, and confusion, of time zone differences.

“Enjoy that first gulp of air,” one of my sisters texted as I left Vancouver, “and take an extra deep breath for me!”

The first breath is a homecoming. The air itself carries so many memories, so much context, and now that I’ve been breathing it for a week it’s hard to edit this lyric essay about cold Vancouver beaches. It feels so far away.

Everything I publish on this Substack is embedded in place. Even — especially — the pieces that borrow from magical realism or slip into myth. If you want to see, real-time, how I build place into writing, consider becoming a paid subscriber for the next three months to receive Field Notes. The first one, coming next week.

Thank you for reading!