I've always been weird. It used to bug me. At some point I guess I decided to embrace it. Now I'm drawn to everything strange. That's why I returned to the Marine Museum in Alexandria. I didn't quite get my fill of strange the first time. It's like a good movie, every time you revisit it, you see something you missed last time. For me, anyway. No one else seems to be as fascinated with this gem as I am, but where other people see odd displays in a weird museum, I see magic. I see a place where time stands still.

The museum is full of dioramas and bones. The surreal and the dead. The figure of an old-fashioned diver has fallen over with it's head resting on a rock. It has very likely been in place, staring at this rock, for years. A flock of taxidermied birds stare out from behind glass, perpetually in mid-flight. Fish are frozen in place in fake aquariums lit with an eerie blue light. The husks of aquatic creatures suspend from nets. Time has stilled here. The frantic quest for survival has no meaning to the bones and paper mâché creatures of this particular place.

I would be happy to stay and wander the celebrated weirdness of the museum, but the kids have finished racing through the exhibits and hunger for the next morsel of entertainment. The adults are congregating at the exit. My husband has left the building. I'm happy to leave though. I don't want to spend this discovery all at once. I will be back.