A row of gods inside the 21st Dynasty coffin of Amenemipet at the British Museum. The snake-headed, bearded god looks like “The Gentleman”, the figure from coffins and papyri that I’ve been trying to identify.
[The five gods are mummiform with white bodies and red mummy braces. Each wears a sash of green and orange. Three have human faces; one has a cat’s head, and one a snake’s head with a beard. Above them is a row of hieroglyphs, and above that, a frieze of tyet knots and djed pillars.]
When many people don’t even bother to read you when they pick you up, but only wish to look at your pretty pictures, we value the ones who choose to read us from cover to cover, relishing each paragraph and page, folding the corners of their favourite pages of us, not wanting to put us down. I cherish the ones who chose me to be their favourite book.
An older spoken word I redid. Please click on image to hear me speak.
JONAH HAUER-KING for Gentleman’s Journal (issue 40, June 2023) 🌼🦋🎀💠🪲
“I try not to overthink it,” he says. “People keep telling me that this or that will change. But I’ve had experiences before where people have said it would change and it hasn’t. You become quite sage about that kind of chat. I accept this might be different. It only makes me feel daunted because I am just about old enough to have a fairly grounded and stable life. I have a relationship, my friends, my life in London. I find the idea of that changing quite daunting, so I pretend it’s not going to happen.”