Like Ghosts, Only Sad

I'll be damned, here comes your ghost again.-Joan Baez


So I watched several wretched horror movies Saturday. Sandy and
I had a very merry time as we MST3K'ed Hellraiser.

I really can't watch horror movies nowadays with any degree of enjoyment.

Suspension of disbelief is the issue, I suppose, for you see, I don't believe in the existence of ghosts or goblins or Freddy or Jason or any of that.

Memories are a different thing.

They can come unbidden, unwelcomed and with no warning. Like ghosts are supposed to be able to do.

To define them as electrical discharges firing along neural pathways is unsatisfactory. That doesn't explain their power, their ability to haunt.

And the haunting is not about some spooky and unexplained presence.

It's more like an absence really. Where there used to be something.
And the expectation that the something ought still to be there.

This is the essence of memory, that is so much more than a visual recall played out on the mind's movie screen.

And the haunting is not played out in fear or terror, but in an existential ache, so deep and so abiding.

And I wonder, would it be selfish or disloyal or even shallow to desire to be done with it? Done with the memories.

Ah, but the truth of the matter is this: memories, seasoned with the bitterness of past sins, move me forward. Take me from this place of haunting.

What next, I wonder?