The Haunted Pearls

Everyone has their own haunted place on earth, plural perhaps…places. Special places that seem to lie in wait, just for them. I’ve found one of mine this summer holiday. I always find that the process of coming across these places on the metaphorical map of your life’s journey seems to be an inexorable one...as if you were meant to go through the dark valleys and shadows they afford, and dance to their sordid music, the bizarre notes plucking away at your brain’s neurons, derailing them. All of it is (usually) initially below conscious reception, but the effects are soon palpable.

So I went through my haunted place this summer…it was in the form of a ground floor apartment I had rented out. I would be all alone, when the sordid music would start playing. With time, the music took effect…it won over my own body…causing my own bodily units to mutiny against the integral structure that is me. Whenever the music played, I would be "choked", and wouldn’t be able to swallow anything, food, and sometimes even liquids. But so powerful was the spell of the music, that after a time, the music wasn’t required for me to gag, I choked of my own accord.

...I am hungry, but cannot eat; hungry, but cannot eat. What kind of mutiny is this…mutually assured…

Thus I tell myself I have to leave this place before this bodily anarchy takes permanent hold.

This mutiny, although (and probably because it is) at a microscopic level, is an incredibly potent and humbling reminder that although claiming to be the conductor of my bodily orchestra, I cannot make the perfect life-giving symphony, if the vital pieces in my body are so unhappy as to not play their notes. They are unhappy and try to push me and you away from the disturbing thing, trying to communicate with us by causing a little discomfort. So I have to leave this place. If not…if I persist here...I fear that the mutineers will not be so insightful as to realise that they are just about to lunge me, and by extension, themselves, into an eternal precipice.

Whoops! …its usually kind of hard to turn back from these sort of things once they've been allowed to happen.

But I left. I left before all of that could happen. Before I could be overwhelmed by the melee. I’m back again…conducting the orchestra of my life. Each time growing more careful…careful in trying to make sure every part of me is happy.
I’ll be out of there even before the vapour of a complaint condenses into my conscious, from the bubbling hot-springs of the subconscious. Yes I will leave, even if you promised me the moon and stars. For what worth are these things, if I do not have any peace of mind left to enjoy them.