Voodoo Thoughts

Yep! I bought some of these in China. Hmm… I wonder if my husband ever took them out of the box?

Who knows why we buy what we buy when we travel.

An even greater mystery is why we keep what we buy.

Many ago my husband went to Mexico for out 25th anniversary.  One of the worst parts of the trip was a visit to an island which our travel agent had arranged with the insistence that we shouldn’t miss the experience.  Ugh!

It was the worst of Mexico.  An island without sanitation

…and I still have this, why?

as we discovered when we walked away from the tourist restaurants on the beach. When, by default, we returned to one of those overpriced places with limited menus of scary stuff…the vendors were like flies.  They came in swarms and refused to be brushed aside.

Because we were trapped on the island by the limited transportation, we began to entertain ourselves with my husband’s Polaroid camera.  (I told you it was a long time ago.)

When he took a photo of a vendor, he was immediately surrounded by people wanting to trade their wares for a photo. To shorten the story, we ran out of film and ended up with a strange pottery bell.

The REAL worry beads (usually black) found in the hand of most men in Greece.

For some reason this came to represent our 25th anniversary instead of a bad travel experience.

Years later in my trips to Greece I was captivated by worry beads and the eyes that were represented every to ward off evil. The men sat in coffee shops twiddling their beads.  So romantic.  Of course, when I went with my sister, the artist, she located gorgeous beads in a shop that were never intended to be slung through the fingers of a man trying to keep his hands from devil’s work.  They were intended to be displayed artfully on a coffee table next to a book of Greek Islands.

I knew I could create my own artistic worry beads

Being a cheapskate a frugal person, I tried to recreate the romantic concept

and the artistic design of the beads in the shop without spending so much money.  Not very successfully, I may add.

The Voodoo Goddess of Wealth and Happiness lost her head along the way.

On a business trip to New Orleans I craved two things: Voodoo dolls and muffaletta sandwiches.  I got two of each.

Trouble is the voodoo dolls aren’t meant to last (although longer than the muffalettas).

I can’t say that the Goddess didn’t do her job.  But it’s time for her to leave our home (with the rest of these travel items).

They will all join the relics of the past.

xxoo