I Was Pixilated or the Grocery List Returns!

Obviously I wasn't sure what to call this post. Pixilated is a nod to author Patrick Harpur who wrote Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld and The Philosophers' Secret Fire: A History of the Imagination. Harpur's mother referred to "Pixilation" as what happens when things go missing such as keys and other items and subsequently turn up-usually in the spot where the person missing the item frantically searched for them earlier. This quote is also from Patrick Harpur, "Indeed, perhaps the purpose of pixilation is to introduce us to the in-between world. It opens a nagging crack in the fabric of our comfortable reality, a crack small enough to ignore or overlook if we wish-as we must, if we are not to plunge into unfathomable depths. Pixilation is analogous to the weak spot on those violent, busy, invulnerable heroes, such as Achilles and Ajax or Sigurd of Norse myth. It is a mixed blessing to be invulnerable, because it also seals you up in your own world and cuts you off from commerce with the Otherworld. Thus, like the little spots of weakness on the hero-the heel or the patch on the shoulder-pixilation is a tiny fault-line symbolising the moment in the midst of our armoured surface, and our invincible egotism, our heroic hurry and certainty, when we are suddenly opened up like wounds to the possibility of death. Death, that is, of the ego and its commonsense life, and the beginning of the deeper, imaginative life of the soul."

After wanting my whole life-or almost my whole life anyway-to have some kind of contact with the mysterious and ineffable it may finally have happened yesterday. Previously I had always wanted to see and have some sort of contact with a ghost or the crew of a UFO-to solve a conspiracy-you name it -just something to take me out of this mundane existence if for only a little while. Hell-in the last few years I probably would have settled for an Elvis sighting or to figure out where Lord Lucan went or even to find out if Anne Coulter is really a woman. Of course with what happened yesterday I think I got the Yugo version instead of the Rolls-Royce version. Here is the story. I have referred various times to being a victim of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder or OCD for short. I am very lucky that my symptoms are fairly mild. They do involve a lot of checking on things like seeing if the door is locked, coffee pot off and so on. I think one of the symptoms of this OCD thing with me is always and I mean always to know where I put stuff-things that I will need to use in a short matter of time. I always put my wallet, car keys etc and anything I will need to do or use for the next day in the top drawer of my dresser.

I had been making out a grocery list for a time and was finally ready to go to the store yesterday morning. I ritually put the grocery list on top of my wallet the night before so I would be good to go the next day. As it turned out, I had an awful time sleeping the night of the 31st and woke quite late (noon) on the first. I really wanted to hustle as I had a lot of things to buy and wanted to get it done before the heat of the day really got going. I threw on some clothes and shoved my wallet -along with I thought-the darn grocery list in my pocket-I had seen it right there where I left it the previous night. Wanting to make sure I had everything I did one last check before getting out the door and sure enough-no grocery list. I thought no prob-it must still be in the drawer where I saw it last. Well it wasn't-I must have checked that damn drawer no less than five or six times-thinking perhaps that I was so irritated I was looking right at it and not seeing it. I finally gave up looking for it and made a new list to the best of my memory. I finally got back home with the groceries and put those away -looking once again in the drawer to see if the original list was there-just out of curiosity-it wasn't. Hours and hours later when I was going to bed for the evening I opened the drawer to put my wallet, keys and other stuff in-perish the thought I could ever leave them on a table or a dish like most normal people!

Well whaddya know?? There was the original grocery list in all its glory sticking out like a sore thumb! I would not have been as dumbfounded were it not for the fact that I must have been in that very same drawer almost twenty times before this-both in the search for it and after getting home. I have no explanation for what happened. All I know is that the list absolutely positively 100% certainly wasn't there before and I live alone so unless Clementina the Cat has learned some pretty nifty tricks no one is screwing around with my head. God forbid should that ever happen-it wouldn't take much to make me certifiable at this point in my life.

I will turn once again to Patrick Harpur before closing: "It looks very much as though so-called pixilations are as much the work of the dead as of the fairies. This should not surprise us: the Otherworld is an ambiguous realm, in which the daemonic beings and the dead often overlap. The dead are often seen among the fairies, for instance, in Irish fairy lore; and in Brittany, all the characterisitics of the fairies are attributed to the dead. As Camille Flammarion remarked in Mysterious Psychic Forces (Boston, 1907), the spirit manifestations in seances more often resemble "the prescences of mischievous boys than serious bona fide actions. It is impossible not to notice this...Either it is us who produce these phenomena or it is spirits. But mark this well: these spirits are not necessarily the souls of the dead; for other kinds of spiritual beings may exist, and space may be full of them without our ever knowing anything about it...Do we not find in the ancient literatures, demons, angels, gnomes, goblins, sprites, spectres, elementals, etc? Perhaps these legends are not without some foundation in fact." Harpur goes on to talk of an ashtray that was in his mom's car that he used to borrow and smoke cigarettes in. After he cleaned the ashtray and left it in an area to dry it also vanished into thin air.

Harpur continues: "My mum died suddenly. (Incidentally, her bunch of keys disappeared by pixilation the day before, but returned on the morning of her death. My sister even remarked that some transition must be in the offing). The day after her funeral, I took her car out. I lit a fag. The ashtray was back where it should be, installed in its slot under the dashboard. Did she replace it? Or did those pesky pixies-the ones she quarrelled with all her life but which now, perhaps, were abetting her? Either way, I had to laugh." OK -I would very much be interested to know if something similar to my experience or ones Patrick Harpur talks about has happened to any of you? Something that you are 100% certain of. I have had some "iffy" strange experiences in my life-but this may very well be my first that I am 100% certain of and that I do not have an explanation for. I am sorry it is not exactly awe-inspiring! Oh the pic is of me and our treasured dog -taken sometime in 1981 or 82. I got the idea to put personal pics up here and there from Aggie who I very much hope is feeling a lot better! If you are not bowled over by my movie star good looks-wait till you see what "times winged chariot" did to me later haha-although I am happy to say I am at least normal weight now and have lost the weight of a small child I was carrying around-knock on wood (more OCD superstition for you). Thanks again so very much for your kind, thoughtful and intelligent comments!

Talk about thought provoking and beautiful please go to this link if you have time-it is a long article-but more than worth your time to take a look at -amazing work Christopher! Link