| Travel
to Touch a Chord: Seeking Genetic and Sociologic Ties |
| Along about
1956 I fell in love with a song that went:
"See the
pyramids along the Nile.
See a sunset
on a tropic isle.
Just remember,
Darling, all the while,
You belong
to me.”
That may not
be a precise rendition, but it’s the one that infected my memory banks,
parked there, and incubated. |
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I know. A
mixed metaphor. Back then I didn’t know much or care much about metaphors,
mixed or otherwise. All I knew is that the pyramids were something I had
to see.
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Since then,
I’ve become a writer. Not a travel writer, a novelist. Death on the Nile
had already been done by Agatha Christie so what did I need with a trip
to Egypt? The song kept nagging me, though. I started clipping articles
from The National Geographic in the early 60s when Lake Nasser began to
inundate the temples in Nubia. Later, I took a few classes in hieroglyphics. |
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| When coffee
table books became popular, a veritable pyramid of big, colorful books
about archaeology in Egypt grew on my own table. It got so large I couldn’t
see the faces of my guests over the top of it. My longing to connect with
this ancient civilization was a disease that never went into remission.
This is the
year I finally picked up and went. I went in spite of 9/11, in spite of
the fears of my friends. But that’s another story. This one is about Egypt
dressed as a muse, for her own people and for the world.
I travel to
touch a chord with my past. I choose places to visit, not so much to see
them, but to feel them. I choose cultures rather than places and seek the
genetic and sociologic ties to those cultures. In Egypt, I found all kinds
of things that fitted into my writers’ soul, my writers’ brain. |
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Offshore
Resources Gallery
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| Example:There
are natural pyramids scattered across the Sahara. Pictures of the Sahara
tend to characterize it as a place that is flat with maybe the highest
point being drifting dunes. I was stunned by the size of these rock structures,
amazed at how similar they were to the famous tombs at Giza or even the
step pyramid at Saqqara. But the most exciting part of this discovery was
that I realized that the Egyptians —even way back then, when culture was
relatively new— needed inspiration. That seems logical and self-evident,
but I had somehow always viewed the pyramids as inspiration to later cultures,
not the other way around. Writers may sometimes get the idea that they've
written something truly unique.It’s always been my theory that there is
no such thing, but I naively credit others with having the ability to create
something from absolutely nothing. Egypt reminded me that my humble need
to experience something before I can write about has been a process used
by humankind since time began. For the Egyptians, this was anywhere from
before 3500 BC to … well, today.
This paradigm
can be extended. Outside the Bahariya Oasis, where The Valley of the Golden
Mummies is being excavated, I took an off-road trip on the desert.Fellow
travelers and I bounced along in an old sport vehicle driven by a Bedouin
with a taste for speed. |
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| We marveled
that this did not fit with our image of tribesmen leisurely rumbling along
on the back of a camel.He was determined to test both our sense of humor
and the relative endurance of our bladders.This was the bone-crunching
mode of transportation required to visit the black desert —a place where
volcanoes spit basalt onto the white desert sand —the crystal desert, and
something called the white desert that looked as if it had been swept by
snowdrifts.
The snowdrifts
were not sand but wind-sculpted white rock, perhaps calcite.In the early
February sun, its glitter was as bright as any slope I’ve skied at 10,000
feet.In another part of the same area, there were sculptured plateaus and
free standing formations suited for any museum of modern art.
As we grew
more tired, our eyes deceived us— much like desert mirages.These formations
became models for sphinxes. |
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| There were
phallic structures that must have inspired obelisks like the ones in the
Place de la Concorde in Paris (originally an Egyptian monument),
the George Washington Monument, and the ones still extant in Egypt in many
Egyptian temples.
Toward dusk
the shadows and colors changed. Their splendor outdid even the sound and
light show at Abu Simbel. It occurred to me that even these tourist
attractions may have been inspired by this natural play of light from the
setting sun and the emerging stars unfaded by light pollution. Such
displays must bury themselves in the minds of those who see them and are
likely to influence art of any kind from vibrant colors on papyrus to laser
presentations for tourists.
"Of all
the experiences I had, with sights, sounds and wonderful people, the one
that stands out for me was this affirmation of creative theory. Not
only because I now feel more assured, somehow, about the similarities between
my work and myth, but also because I am somehow connected to the inherent
truth of how similar we all are to all of humanity, clear back to the first
stirrings of creative mankind."
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