A Conclusion of Circles

I was given a necklace yesterday by a man wearing a ball cap with all sorts of sticks and pipe cleaners and stuff sticking out of the top. He was some sort of tall, grisly-haired, bright-eyed hippie wandering around, bestowing these necklaces on anyone who was in his domain. This domain would be categorized as a craft corner at the Deaflympics Expo; take whatever supplies you want and create. For some reason, kids flocked there and anyone taller than four feet was only supervising. Except me. There were no rules that said you had to be a kid to participate, and I felt honored that this guy would bestow a necklace on my head like a lei from some humble, honored grass-skirted leader.

The necklace itself is what I want to focus on. Only after I got home (the entire day was quite an adventure) did I think closer on the thing itself. The cord was insignificant other than it wasn't pink (he had a handful of pink ones), and it was the pendant that I concentrated on. It's a disc of wood from a tree branch, rings, bark and all. Someone took a living thing's limb, chopped it like celery pieces for a stew, put holes in the top and packaged them up to be shelved and bought in craft stores. I wonder where the tree's roots were buried; I wonder if it was a trunk or a limb, an appendage or a vital organ.

The thought that a child or a living thing was slaughtered doesn't bother me too much. After all, that kind of thought accompanies the sight of meat, and I still drool when I smell it. It's not the wood itself; we make furniture out of trees, I love decorating with wood, and I don't feel guilty at all because the earth and all things on it are made for people to use. It's the thought that this wood disc on a rainbow cord is an equivelant of wearing dog bones, teeth or a scalp. It suddenly feels so... barbaric. I feel like civilization has come around to where it started. A full circle. Like the wooden disc and the rings within it.

I think I'll find a ribbon to replace the rainbow cord.