If I know anything about myself, it's that I have a very active imagination.  Most of the time this is a fantastic gift that I am hugely grateful for.  I have no problem thinking of things to create; I have infinite projects and possibilities constantly streaming through my head with my own personal, private, endless wifi connection.  Being bored is not in my vocabulary. 

(Parenthetical side note detour:  I have lots of enablers for this semi-blissful condition.  You know who you are: "Hey Sara, do you have any use for these?  I was gonna throw them out but thought you could do something with them!"  Or.... "I have five bags of purple wooden (insert-cool-item-here-thingys)..... I'm going to bring them in cos I know you and your kids could definitely use them!"  My brain: "Oooooh! We can do this, and this, and this..... oooh the possibilities!  I'll just put it over here. For now."  This.  Is.  How.  Hoarding.  Starts.) 

Anyway, I digress. You get my point, right?  Most of the time, I repeat, MOST of the time being imaginative can make for some pretty cool days. 

Sometimes, however, this imagination of mine takes me places unwillingly. That's right. I get kidnapped under my own cognizance.  This makes for some not very cool days. Or nights. Two events in particular stand out from my youth. 

The house that I grew up in in Belgium had stairs up to a bathroom on the right, and then you had to turn left to climb two more stairs. When I was old enough to be going to bed by myself I would walk up those stairs scared to death that someone was going to "get me,".  I was convinced that the bathroom to the right was harboring a maleficent, evil thing-person hiding in the dark shadows. It would jump on me the minute I turned my back on the bathroom door to turn left, I just knew it would. So I began carrying ammunition up the stairs with me.  I was ready.  The minute I sensed motion behind me I would launch that missile glass of water at the thing. Because it might just melt the thing, or the shock it would invoke might work long enough to give me time to run back downstairs to Mum and Dad and to safety!

I even remember the night I was walking up the stairs, big glass of water in my right hand, when it suddenly hit me that it wouldn't do me ANY good on the right side. No, I'd need to carry it in my left hand, because I would turn left then immediately spin around to that side and throw the water from the wrong angle....  I was SO thankful I figured that out before it was too late! Saved my life, it did, that little bit of clever thinking!

Fast forward about ten years. My friends and I took the train to Brussels to see "Friday the 13th."  Yes, that one- the original one.  I rode my bike to the train station in Waterloo. (I can't remember who I went with so if it was you please remind me!)

We saw the movie;  I was terrified; we took the train home.  Now I had to ride back through late-night Waterloo with images of crazy Jason with the hockey mask coming after me.  It had been the very first horror movie I'd ever seen and I vividly remember the white-knuckled ride home!  

It just got better and better, living inside my head.  Art in high school was my sanctuary. I went on amazing school trips to faraway lands that fueled the globe-trotting fire and the endless ruminations that typically placed me (and my imagination) in a front-row seat during important historical events.

Ok, I confess, I still do that actually. I'm going to Belize, and if I'm fortunate enough to visit the Mayan ruins again, I know I'll stand at the top of a temple if possible. I know I'll tune out all the other tourists and spend a few minutes streaming the "Live from the Mayan Sacrificial Games" on SaraFlix.  I'll look down at the rainforest canopy, wondering if that is the same stunning view that many victims saw for the last time before (willingly? not so much?) being gifted to the gods. What were they thinking? How did they get to the top? 

I love the endless ruminations, and I especially love archaeology, learning about and breathing in historical artifacts.  I even love my hoarder-enablers. Isn't imagination an incredible gift- MOST of the time?!   

Akhenaten (born Amenhotep) was an Egyptian Pharoah. He came along at a time when Egyptian iconography, all of the dozens of gods, and mythology were quite firmly established. He and his wife Nefertiti (they were King Tut's Mum and Dad)  and the rest of the nation were all getting along swimmingly well there along the banks of the Nile River about 3300 years ago. So along comes this young upstart Pharoah Akhenaten and really turns things upside down. "Right, you lot..." he may have said (or the Ancient Egyptian equivalent, of course. For some reason I'm hearing John Cleese narrate Akhenaten's part in this which is really a bit incongruous, but it works in my head. Get yer own voice if you don't like John.)  "We're getting rid of all these gods, except one. From now on, there will be only one god, right?  We'll call him the one god, Aten."   This period in art history is known as the Amarna period, after the capital city that he built and named.  He was a heretic and perhaps the first monotheistic ruler in history.  The manner in which Akhenaten was depicted has puzzled art historians for years- it was such a radical departure from the norm. For a long time it was thought that Akhenaten had what Abraham Lincoln suffered from, Marfan Syndrome.  The sculptures show him with long neck and fingers, effeminate hips, lips, an elongated skull and a bit of a belly.  Then it was thought that perhaps he had gynecomastia- a condition in which males have enlarged breasts.  Since the discovery of his body in 1907, archaeologists have been able to study his DNA and conclusively rule out Marfan syndrome and gynecomastia.  The current thinking?  Akhenaten himself wanted to be portrayed as divine, both female and male, in one body.  After his death many of the Amarna sculptures were destroyed, and the nation reverted to polytheism.

Fast forward a few thousand years.  I've become quite used to seeing Akhenaten's face, it is very distinctive in Egyptian art history.  One day, while looking at pictures on Instagram for an Advanced Art global art project, one face seemed to scream out at me, so much so that my jaw did the proverbial gob-smacked-hanging-open-thing. I saw a photo of a woman who could be Akhenaten's twin- or perhaps descendent.  The photo is by Rada Akbar, a brilliant photographer in Afghanistan.(Her website is http://www.radaphotography.com/.

I was so intrigued by the likeness that I spent some time playing with the photo of the woman and a photo of a sculpture of Akhenaten. I cropped, and merged, and documented the merging and cropping.  The results are nothing short of stunning. This young woman in Afghanistan, photographed by Rada Akbar, could be the twin sister of Akhenaten!  The woman's name is Naghm.  She lives in a refugee camp in Kabul.  I desperately want to know her story.  ​

Coming up:  I am going to share this story with the photographer, Rada Akbar.  I'm very curious to know her reaction!