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Blogs by Leslie Musoko
Tongue tied and breathing: The choir boy 4/18/2010 4:17:08 AM
He that holdeth the sepulcher hath thy words... The mornings where I live are not much to shout about but there are those few that often catch one off guard and this was one of those for me. It felt as though there was a ferocious storm in my room. Anyone would have thought I had been caught in a wind tunnel at the rate at which this one was blowing in my face. Where it had come from was hard to guess as my windows were shut and from what I could hear outside there where no storms in the weather to cater for. The wind grew with every second and eventually I noticed that I was choking in it. I was slowly sleeping into death not knowing where it had come from. The oxygen was escaping my lungs and I fought with everything I knew to keep myself from suffocating. It was hard to imagine that this was what my life had come to. I was being strangled by an unknown force in my own bed and had no strength in me to overcome it. At this instance I wondered about what many people had said about death. When this time descended upon us it was not uncommon for one to contemplate their existence. I found myself looking back at my life reflecting on the good and bad. I had lived a good life, seeing the world and having a good family to support me. I had given love and received love in return. I had risen in status and fallen. I had pushed myself overcoming my fears engaging in death stunts going as far as sky diving, living in the world freely and enjoying what was available to me. My life had been good and if death was now at my doorstep then I had no need to fight it. I found my grip on life loosen as the force around my neck tightened and I let myself go allowing the inevitable to occur.
Eventually I felt myself rising. I breathed in slowly the little air that was made available to me leaving the bed behind and heading towards the sky. It was a strange sensation because I knew I was in my room yet it felt as though my familiar surroundings had disappeared being replaced by the sky and the sun far off. I climbed slowly into the skies grasping at the little air available to me as the wind rushed against my face waiting for my senses to cease. Who could tell if I had passed on into another world? I had no reason not to believe I had not. I rose slowly towards the sun and noticed many shapes and sizes, dark cone like objects formed in the clouds that hid a bright sun. As I came closer they appeared to be shadows of people looking up to the sun as I did, with their mouths wide open shouting something inaudible.
Eventually I got close enough to the shadows and heard a very high resonance realizing for the very first time that they were singing in the direction of the glistening light from the sun. The sound was so loud that I froze in a trance as I observed them, shocked that I was even in their presence to bare witness. I saw no definite shapes or physical forms of people just shadows formed in large numbers reflected upon the clouds. Yet I could hear their voices so loud and clear in the day as if they stood all around me. They sang joyously looking up in the direction of the sun and I tried desperately to understand what they were saying. I could make no sense from the language but what became immediately and astonishingly clear to me was that I knew the song. It was familiar to my ears yet indeterminable in my mind. It was like knowing the words to a song in a foreign language that one understood nothing off. As I listened to the people I noticed that the grip around my neck tightened even further and I began saying my farewells to all the people I had known on earth. I told myself that this time it looked as though I won’t be returning from whatever it was I was facing. This time if I was in the spirit then it was everlasting.
The pressure around my neck became unbearable and I found myself choke, opening my mouth to now take in the air around me. What happened next was amazing. I heard myself join in with the crowd chanting to the song as loudly as they did. I sang without control and without my will a song that had no meaning to me but familiar in its sound. I continued singing for what seemed like a few minutes and then I felt the grip around my neck loosen and I was suddenly released and back in my room lying beneath the bed covers again.
