Pack up your troubles and don’t forget your passport …
Riddle me this: a box which once opened cannot be closed again … a shirt without a seam … a little white cottage with neither door nor window … it has neither foot nor hand, neither head nor tail; it is neither living nor dead … what am I? The egg is a mystery wrapped in a riddle.
As a child growing up in Western Pennsylvania, when I wasn’t tooling around on my bike exploring abandoned rock quarries looking for crystals, I’d empty the contents of a wrinkled brown paper bag onto the bed and play with my collection of marble eggs. Honey onyx from Iran, tiger’s eye from Namibia, mossy green serpentine from the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, Colorado grey marble, African agate, Mexican malachite, Giallo Antico marble quarried in the Provincia di Siena in Tuscany that reminded me of the base of a lamp my grandparents kept in the good room, Afghan lapis as blue as the skies over Kabul and rose quartz the colour of strawberry milkshakes. I’d cup one in my palm, feeling the weight of the polished rock, then pass it back and forth between hands to warm the cold stone egg while downstairs my parents argued.
Michelangelo’s chisel freed the slaves trapped in grey-veined blocks of white Carrara marble; I’d use my weekly allowance to liberate marble eggs from the souvenir shops dotting Pennsylvania toll roads. My family drove a lot, visiting friends and relatives, scouting locations for a dream house, or just to release tension. “Let’s go somewhere!”, my father would growl after another bitter bout with my mother, and I’d grab my paper bag. Legend has it that the city of Naples is built on eggs. In ancient times, foundations required a blood sacrifice (to appease the god of general contractors?) in the belief that a new structure would surely collapse without burying someone alive at the proposed site. At some stage, perhaps prompted by a slave revolt, the blood sacrifice was dropped. Substituting an egg, the symbol of life, seemed like progress.
“The great affair is to move; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.” Robert Louis Stevenson
Naples or Rome, India or Ibiza; most of us spend the dark months dreaming of light while some, like a trembling of finches, overwinter in Spain. Braver hearts attempt the impossible: gulps of swallows journey over desert and sea, leaving home only to come home. “The eye has to travel”, according to Diana Vreeland, legendary editor at Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, but when we leave our quotidian lives behind, who do we hope to become? From the thronged aisles of Penneys on Dublin’s Mary Street of a Saturday to the plush changing rooms of Brown Thomas, we murmurate, trying on new selves to pack for going on holiday. Chic cigarette trousers with a crop top (if you dare) or boho ruffles and biker boots? Beachy hair and a beach read or strappy sandals and barely-there slip dress?
In 1968, my father’s promotion meant we’d have to move house, move state, to New York. My smalltown mama raised holy hell, crying her lights out at the prospect of leaving her beloved mother and father behind, but leave we did. The day we moved into the mid-century modern model home in a suburban Long Island development, I went out into the backyard, and, hoping the gods wouldn’t demand blood, buried my clutch of marble eggs. @susanzelouf
1. I’M PEREGRINATING Kerala’s heady spice markets in a saffron www.bottegaveneta.com draped jersey dress.
2. I’M TRIPPING out at Perth’s bubblegum-pink lakes. www.soperth.com.au.
3. I’M NAVIGATING this cruel world guided by a www.chupi.com North Star diamond necklace.
4. I’M SAVING my skin in Zimmermann’s Fellini-esque wide-brimmed dark chocolate raffia hat. www.mytheresa.com.
5. I’M DANCING dusk-till-dawn in a www.ferragamo.com asymmetric silk georgette mini dress.
6. I’M GETTING all leathered up in Burberry Resort 2025. Visit Burberry’s London flagship store on Regent Street.
7. I’M VREELANDING from here on in, inspired by Diana’s ethos “Why don’t you …?” Why don’t I, indeed?
8. I’M TREKKING in www.prada.com Monolith desert beige leather and Re-Nylon boots (w/‘roo pouch).
9. I’M SOUKING it to you in a boho H&M Studio Resort 2025 Moroccan-inspired maxi dress.
10. I’M PUTTING all my marble eggs in one basket. www.tregeaglefineart.com.
11. I’M PUNCHING above my weight via Pink Grapefruit Party Punch. Mixology by www.taste.com.au.
13. I’M SEEING the light in www.kapten-son.com Cassis sunnies.
