"eat this scroll"
"Ezekiel 3:1-3"
I take exquisite joy in presenting an unphotoshopped image of Ezekiel's original, delicious scroll, made available to me via Infogoddess, who left a comment at my blog entry of two days ago on the "Bibliophagic Imperative: 'Eat This Book!'":
I love this quotation from Ezekiel which was used in my entry for the 2008 "Eat Yours Words Boulder: Edible Books Tea" -- at the time I worked in a theological library and my co-workers helped me pick the verse while I made a scroll of phyllo dough -- lots of fun -- pictures here.Oh, wait . . . it's not the original. How silly of me. The original was devoured by none other than Ezekiel. If it had been found, it would no longer look so undigested. This is a somewhat abbreviated version of Ezekiel 3:1-3 painstakingly handcopied by the Infogoddess herself onto a piece of 'parchment' that she herself handcrafted. For ease of presentation, I post the words as copied from the copy above:
He said to me: Son of man, eat what is before you; eat this scroll . . . . . So I opened my mouth and he gave me the scroll to eat . . . I ate it, and it was as sweet as honey.The Infogoddess didn't say if she managed to glimpse an image of the original itself -- whether from a facsimile in that theological library that she mentions or from an image in a vision that she doesn't mention -- but she'll perhaps tell us more if she visits again.
I'd also like to know what happened to this priceless manuscript depicted above. Was it actually eaten? Did it taste as sweet as honey? It didn't, by chance, turn someone's stomach bitter, did it?
LOL - thanks for posting my pic - it took many hours of experimentation to get the scroll just right and I basted it with a concoction of honey and butter before baking it in the oven, so it did indeed taste sweet - as to its ultimate demise, part of the fun of an edible books event is that at a designated time all participants devour the concoctions - I took great delight in watching a young man who had patiently stationed himself beside the scroll rip it in two and consume it as fast as he could - had I been a better caligrapher I would have been able to have the entire quote on the scroll but as it was my third attempt to get it right I just ran out of time and settled for the most salient parts - edible book festivals are held all over the world as close as possible to April 1st - read more about them here http://www.colophon.com/ediblebooks/
ReplyDeleteThanks for visiting again. I had hoped that you wouldnt mind my publicizing your aesthetic culinary effort.
ReplyDeleteThe young man who devoured it must have thought himself either Ezekiel the Prophet or St. John the Divine!
Did anyone else get to have a bite?
I did know about the eating (but thought that I'd ask anyway). I was alerted to the fact of edible book festivals by Blake Eskin's New York Times article "Books to Chew On" (March 26, 2006).
Jeffery Hodges
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