On Friday I was browsing nwsource , a local events website published by the combined forces of the Seattle Times and the Post-Intelligencer. I noticed a feature article they were running on a jewelery designer named Kimberly Baker. The photo that accompanied the piece showed a pair of silver seahorses, back to back, their bodies curving together to form a heart. I thought it was lovely so I visited the designer's website. Much of her work turned out to have a distinctly naturalistic flavor to it, and a lot of it featured sea life, including a stunning necklace featuring an octopus with two green garnets — for eyes or for prizes I am not sure which — its tentacles reaching out and grasping the chain that holds it.

I decided I had to have it so I visited her shop in Fremont on Saturday. I bought him in gold, and paid over four hundred dollars for him. This is more than I've ever spent on any piece of jewelery in my life. I philosophize and rationalize by thinking that just like I'd have twelve children if babies looked like puppies, I'd also bankrupt myself on jewelry if I could find more of it that resembled large, intelligent mollusks. However, neither one of these conditions is likely to ever become a reality.

It was such a treat getting to buy it straight from the artist who created it. This is one of those things about living in a big city that I will miss if I ever leave Seattle.

I love the way he looks around my neck. His body perfectly matches the scar from my surgery four years ago. I imagine him protecting it for me, enhancing it, and transforming it into something sublime.