Shells

Pistachios are sold two ways: in-shell and no-shell.

(Aside: shelled is one of those words that can mean ‘in a shell’ and also ‘having had its shell removed’)

The benefit of no-shell pistachios is that they’re easy to eat. You can eat handfuls of them, one fell swoop at a time.

In-shell pistachios, by contrast, take a little work. Each nut is prised from its protective covering, one by one. As a result, they take longer to consume and there’s a pile of shells that remain.

That pile becomes a visual record, which is helpful. Without those shells, who knows how many pistachios you just ate? (The answer is: a lot.)

Most of what we consume — especially with our eyes and ears — doesn’t have a shell. We don’t have a mound of wrappers for all the links we click, or a pile of refuse from places we’ve scrolled or articles we’ve read. There aren’t leftovers from the songs we’ve heard or the sunrises we’ve witnessed.

But what if there were?

What might those piles tell us?

It’s curious.