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In the Beginning

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My first piece of adornment, for it could not be called Jewelry, was a find on the beach. It was truly a fabulous length of seaweed complete with beads that I swagged around my neck and let fall to my knees. I remember running up and down the water’s edge waiting for the mermaids to come and claim me as a missing child of the ocean, but the fact they did not, did not disappoint me. It was after all, just pretend.

My mother brought the true reality home when I was not allowed to bring that stinking stuff into the car when it was time to go home. I gently placed my treasured find onto a rock for safekeeping, to have again when I returned. I must have been all of four years old.

The fact that I still remember shows how special that piece of seaweed made me feel and from the beginning this is probably how a cave man or woman felt with a wondrous find of a beautiful stone with a hole in it that could be strung on a piece of vine and hung around the neck.

If it was also a gift from one to another, the smile was broader and the pleasure truer. Is this not what it is all about, to give pleasure? I recall a visit with the Iban Tribe in Borneo in 1969 where the men would make a small hole in the ear lobe and push a twig or small piece of wood through the hole. Later, a slightly bigger piece of wood would stretch the hole to make it larger and so on and so on until the lobes were very long indeed and the hole was big enough to see through.

This look was on the older men as the procedure took quite some time and was believed to be a deterrent to demons as they were supposed to enter the body through the ear. The children of the tribe taught me the name for necklace which was muriat (spelling?), and today I still think of a necklace as a muriat. A beautiful word.

Do visit Barbara www.nagagan.com

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