Pearls

"Pearls are layers and layers of soothing nacre intended to insulate the delicate mollusk from the irritant that has abraded it. At root, a pearl is a disturbance, a beauty caused by something that isn't supposed to be there, about which something needs to be done. It is the interruption of equilibrium that creates beauty. Beauty is a response to provacation to intrusion. The pearl's beauty is made as a result just as art is made as a response to something in our environment that fires us up, sparks us, causes us to think differently. The pearl, like art, must be catalyzed. We, unlike the mollusk, can invite the disturbance that provokes us into art."

~taken from The Sound of Paper by Julia Cameron