Circles

“All my life’s a circle, still I wonder why,
Season’s spinning ‘round again, years keep rolling by.”


I have recently begun to plan for the annual Halloween party, in which this year’s theme is Egypt. To get an idea for decorating, I picked up a few books on the subject. I am ashamed to admit that before this week, my total accumulation of knowledge on Egypt was a) when mummies attacked there was generally someone wearing a Fez nearby which caused an unnatural association between mummies and Shrine Club members and b) Cleopatra wore a lot of makeup, looked vaguely like Elizabeth Taylor, and committed suicide via snake. Five thousand years of rich history and all I have to show are the above “facts”, and a few good puns. (Think “pain in the asp”….) So I started on the task of acquiring more info.

After searching for more Egypt information, I came to the stark realization that I will never “know” as much as I want to. The world is so full of wonder for me that I find myself wandering from topic to topic trying to drink it all in. (For those of you familiar with the Family Circus comics, I AM Billy. I can not walk from point A to point B without being distracted by something at point C.) For every morsel I dig up about a civilization or event, there are a dozen more tangents that draw me in. For example, while reading a new book on Egypt, I learn that there was a short, bearded dwarf god that they called “Bes” (or was it “Keith”?). That caused me to think about other gods and what they might be, so I flipped to the section on deities, remembering that my friend Dom recently mentioned Guanyin, the Chinese goddess of mercy, in a blog. Under deities, I learned that there was a cat goddess, Bastet, and that often the Egyptians mummified cats and placed them with the entombed humans, using copious amounts of linen in the process. This made me think about a) Anna and b) Ericka and the textile ladies making linen shirts…I wonder if Ericka has ever mummified anything, since she happily dressed a rat, and did you know that linen is 20% stronger when it’s wet? Intrigued by the process, I had to flip to the section on mummification rituals. When reading about mummification, and the use of Natron, I learned that Egypt had a wonderful spice trade going on, so I flipped to the economic section, but while turning the page, I spied a recipe for hummus that was found in a tomb. Yum. That lead me to more information about ancient Egyptian food items like omelets and beer. Which made me think of my friend Dan, and the mummy we should have made for him. In thinking about mummies, I thought of Mummy Dearest, which made me think of coat hangers, and that reminded me to do laundry. I could go on, but I think you get the picture. There’s so much to learn, and so little time.

We’re going to need a bigger bookshelf.


*Circles, by Harry Chapin