Day 38: Myrtles Plantation
I made it to the Plantation around 3pm. I took the ten dollar tour of the place and purchased a home made Carmel Pecan Turtle. And I tell you, the wonders of this world along with the mysteries of the next pale when compared to the sensation one gets when indulging in a properly made pecan dessert. I must admit that I am biased, as I grew up with a pecan orchard in my back yard, but surely the pecan is objectively the greatest drupe of its genus!
The tour though, was more interesting than I had expected. But due to my failing spirit concerning the depth of these write-ups I am obliged to keep this post very brief.
Suffice it to say the area is a famous antebellum plantation located in Francisville, Louisiana. Many people met with their untimely fates on its ground. It is reported that 12 ghosts haunt the location, ten of which were people who were murdered. The most prominent was a man named William Winter who died from a shot gun blast to the chest. He was shot on his porch, staggered into the house, trying to make it to his wife who was on the second floor. He died in her arms on the 17th step. It's reported by many that he is still seen on the stairs, haunting it.
As I do at all of my haunted sites I snap absurd amounts of pictures every moment. So far I have failed to capture anything other than a few colored orbs, which aren't much. I captured a purple orb in the Bell Witch Cave but that is about the extent of it. I am, however investigating an oddity captured in one of my Myrtle Plantation photos, but it's nothing too noteworthy as of the moment.
I'll now address why I should have a failing spirit.
I was persevering nobly without a computer, but it seems the longer I am on the road the more difficult it is becoming to find the enthusiasm to stay in one spot long enough to do a thorough write up on an IPhone with a cracked screen. When I stop, I want to rest, not particularly write. On top of that, I've been feeling under the weather. My head hurts and I've been feeling nauseous on and off again. Not to mention my air conditioning, which I got fixed before I left, appears to be failing again.
Laying on the grass at a rest stop in Louisiana, mid day at this moment, I am well. But the long hours on the road offer me too much time to get lost in my head. Or in other words I get depressed.
I cannot look upon depression as purely evil though. My mind has been called up to too many wondrous things of which I would have never had an opportunity to glean had I been made without a propensity to wade as I have through the dark.
That said, I can't advocate that it is a particularly healthy thing either. Obviously it comes with its burden. Its heaviness crushes spirits and often times leaves a wake of heartache and suffering in its path. I won't be cited spouting any cures for the problem. That I suppose must be determined by the individual in their specific condition. I would, pertaining to a "cure" for it, make a distinction however, between feeling happy and being at peace. When it seems as though within a blink the cheery disposition turns bleak, one begins to think of the difference.
At times in my life I have found myself so thoroughly miserable as to find myself wishing that the mountains themselves would descend upon me and utterly bury me in their earthy darkness. It has seemed preferable to the mental anguish that any who has experienced it to such a degree would admit that it is truly an endless torment upon a living soul.
I would admit right here and now in this entry that the thought of dying has, at times, pervaded my whole self. In contrast, I'd also share at this time that I have seen through eyes of death, some of the most exquisite things a mortal could be blessed enough to see.
I've spent many hours contemplating in great depth those beautiful things and what they have signified. I get all sorts of lost in the complexity of the nature of life and love, but the simplest thing I can take from it to share with others is that if you are blessed enough to call yourself a human being you are beautiful beyond words.
I will end there without the least attempt to circle this post back around, creatively tying it to why I am interested in the ghosts of Myrtles Plantation. My mind, at this time is simply too tired.
I am also behind one day again, as I visited Vicksburg today. I will try to get back on track tomorrow as soon as I can. Maybe I will post Vicksburg mid day. And then tomorrow, that night. If that made sense, goodnight. If it didn't, still, goodnight.