Inside the Egg

Yesterday I started to make a shrine by cutting out an oval hole from an eggshell.  I'd seen pictures in an art book and I thought it would be fun.  I used a box cutter to score the shell and eventually popped out a window into the shell.  Then I had fried eggs.

Cutting out the window left some rough edges that I managed to sand down a little after washing out the inside of the egg.

So now I had a mini eggshell shrine -- or, more accurately, a pyx or reliquary.  I looked through my jewelry box for things that could fit inside an egg. 

And then the following realization sideswiped me:  I'm building a shrine to something out of a craftily-cut egg shell.  But what do I want to enshrine?  Did I really want to enshrine a Disney pin, faux-medieval coin, or LED earring?

So that leaves me a photo of my family.  Grandma?  No -- I'd had an elaborate arts-and-craft Viking good-bye for her, which would seem to be undone by putting her into an egg.   My family?  No -- a static image of my family would be a shrine to the moment they were frozen by the photo. 

In a sarcastic moment I considered putting a small mirror in so I could sing "Me" to the Isis-Istarte chant; but that would be a shrine to my own Neo-Pagan Irritation. 

I could paint the inside of the egg in shades of darkening blue, like Vigali Hamilton does with rock sculptures.  Or black.  Mark would like that: a shrine to empty nothingness. 

I kind of like that, too; except that I would look into the blackness of the egg as a medatative focus or a tool to scry into the future.  A shrine to meditation seems a little too ironic.  A shrine to the future?  I can see myself dusting a shrine to the future, which sounds like a Laurie Anderson song.

So if you see me, one eyebrow slightly raised, a crinkle in my forehead, looking off-center at a small object, you'll know that I'm pondering its symbolic resonances.  And if it will fit inside the egg.