Yesterday evening we had friends over to our apartment for our weekly oomancy session. As I was sweeping the floor in anticipation of their arrival, I reflected upon the first time I tried my hand at oomancy. But really, I muse, it was oomancy that tried its hand at me: I had not intended to use the eggs for divination, yet, in retrospect, musn't something have been divined?
—My apologies to the uninitiated: Oomancy is divination by means of eggs. Oo means ‘eggs’ (think ovo, but without the ‘v’), and mancy means ‘, divination by means of’. I only learned this quite recently myself.
This particular morning was my assigned day to bring breakfast to share after the small religious service that took place in the Student Union Building early on Wednesday mornings, which I was accustomed to attend intermittently. I had decided to bring a variation on my family's traditional weekend breakfast: fresh blueberry muffins and medium-boiled eggs. Unfortunately, I insisted upon the freshness of the muffins at the expense of my presence at the service: I baked them the morning of, rather than (as would have been sensible) the night before; I arose too late; I measured too carefully; I spent too long whisking the eggs; the hour to leave for the service passed me by. I said to myself, “No matter! I shall move with haste and outstrip the passage of the minutes!”
—You who are wise in egg-boiling will know that there is no way of knowing whether the eggs are done (without cracking the egg open and thereby destroying the integrity of the boiled-egg experience): the only way to cook them the way one wants to is to time them exactly. The egg heeds no one's haste.
In any case, I arrived at the SUB, shuffling in sheepishly to the room shortly after the service had ended, and set my out breakfast-cargo on the table. Upon seeing the eggs, my friend remarked that I had brought no implements with which to crack them: I, to whom, although sympathetic towards this point, it would never had occurred to bring utensils for that purpose, could think of no course of action but to demonstrate my family’s traditional method of egg-cracking, namely, knocking the egg firmly against the forehead:—and smashed the runny, undercooked egg all over my face.
For my friend's part, he told me, his mirth more than made up for the loss of the eggs. As for me, I was embarrassed and bemused, and ascribed to the episode no more significance than as a lesson to hallow the timing of boiling eggs. Now, though, I am inclined to wonder: what mystical meaning did this ovum wish to communicate to me? With what spiritual residue has it imbued my forehead, ever eluding my sight? Could the science of oomancy decipher its traces? Will I ever see clearly its true signification?