In Himalaya, people place small flags inscribed with prayers in locations where the strongest winds blow.
Under the constant battering by the winds, the fabric starts to disintegrate, and the flags are torn apart scattering the pieces in every direction.
This is how the prayers are freed from their material, worldly aspect.
It just occurred to me, the same procedure, or ritual, is recurrently performed with shells of snails. A surface of a shell is rough and inscribed with scratches made by the sea, a reminiscent of writing; a prayer perhaps, or a wish, or a prophesy. Breaking free from the captive form means that you have to crack the shell in order to let the spirit go – wherever it then goes.
But I don’t crack shells or snails, and never will. It is the sea itself with its mighly waves that amuses itself by inscribing its undeciphrable symbols on living things, snails, conches, shellfish, and then, whimsically, it cracks these small creatures against rocks destroying its own messages and messengers.