{"id":20685,"date":"2018-11-02T06:52:52","date_gmt":"2018-11-02T10:52:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=20685"},"modified":"2018-11-02T06:52:52","modified_gmt":"2018-11-02T10:52:52","slug":"ghosts-necessary-and-otherwise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2018\/11\/ghosts-necessary-and-otherwise\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghosts Necessary and Otherwise"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image:<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: “Are You Santa Claus (c. 1900),” a postcard uploaded to Flickr<\/a> by user “pellethepoet.” (Used here under a Creative Commons license; thank you!)]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river<\/em><\/a> (which this week pulled a handful of favorites from Hallowe’ens gone by):<\/p>\n

Every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable and finally has come to look and not to buy. So shoes are worn and hassocks are sat upon and finally everything is left where it was and the spirit passes on, just as the wind in the orchard picks up the leaves from the ground as if there were no other pleasure in the world but brown leaves, as if it would deck, clothe, flesh itself in flourishes of dusty brown apple leaves and then drops them all in a heap at the side of the house and goes on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Marilynne Robinson [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

14 rue Serpentine<\/em>: a Paris Notebook
\n<\/strong>(excerpt)<\/em><\/p>\n

14.<\/p>\n

So the dead are among us again
\neven here where Halloween is not celebrated
\nand the moon flies through the skeletons of trees
\nand men in rowboats fish for souls on the river
\nThere is a woman with spidery hair swinging a lantern
\ndisappearing down the colonnade
\na row of buildings tilted like gravestones
\nin which a single window is lit
\na wall from whose depths shadows emerge
\nassuming the contours of bodies they will follow
\nall night and abandon at dawn:
\na revelation to you
\nthat each day we take on a new shadow<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Nicholas Christopher [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

There was a time when the coming of this night meant something. A dark Europe, groaning in superstitious fear, dedicated this Eve to the grinning Unknown. A million doors had once been barred against the evil visitants, a million prayers mumbled, a million candles lit. There was something majestic about the idea.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Robert Bloch [source: none canonical, but I found the story reproduced here<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Ghost Stories<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the back yard
\nthe heavy frost lies
\nexactly in the shape of
\nthe shadow of the house,
\nminute by minute disappearing
\nas the earth spins.<\/p>\n

Who would live in such a
\nfrosted house of shadows?
\nGhosts turned silver with age.
\nThey come and go with
\nthe rising of the sun,
\nthe turning of the seasons.<\/p>\n

In summer I think they
\nlive in the dew at the edge
\nof deep woods where the
\nlast pasture touches
\nthe first trees.<\/p>\n

Sometimes they slip in among
\nthe hickories and beech,
\ndarkening into silhouettes.
\nIt is hard to walk in the woods
\nwithout stepping on them:
\nwhat you think is the spongy floor
\nof the forest is their dark bodies
\nlying all in one direction,
\ncircling the trees they cling to,
\nalways rooted somehow
\nwherever they choose to lie down.<\/p>\n

All the stories are true.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Grace Butcher [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

A Ghost Abandons the Haunted<\/strong><\/p>\n

You ignore the way light filters through my cells,
\nthe way I have of fading out—still
\nthere is a constant tug, a stretching,
\nwhat is left of me is coming loose. Soon,<\/p>\n

I will be only crumbs of popcorn,
\na blue ring in the tub, an empty
\ntoilet paper roll, black mold
\nmisted on old sponges,<\/p>\n

strands of hair woven into
\ncarpet, a warped door
\nthat won\u2019t open, the soft spot
\nin an avocado, celery, a pear,<\/p>\n

a metallic taste in the beer, a cold sore
\non your lip—and when I finally lose my hold
\nyou will hear a rustle and watch me spill
\ngrains of rice across the cracked tile.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Katie Cappello [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

The paleontologist Teilhard carried a notebook in which he had written, among other things, a morning prayer: “Be pleased yet once again to come down and breathe a soul into the newly formed, fragile film of matter with which this day the world is to be freshly clothed.”<\/p>\n

The realm of loose spirit never interested Teilhard. He did not believe in it. He never bought the view that the world was illusion and spirit alone was real. He had written in his notebook from a folding stool in the desert of the Ordos, “There are only beings, everywhere.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Annie Dillard [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

“All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies<\/em> to make life bearable.”<\/p>\n

Really?<\/span> [said Death.] As if it was some kind of pink pill? No. Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”<\/p>\n

Yes. As practice. You have to start out learning to believe the little<\/em> lies.<\/span><\/p>\n

“So we can believe the big ones?”<\/p>\n

Yes. Justice. Mercy. Duty. That sort of thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

“They’re not the same at all!”<\/p>\n

You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show<\/em> me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet<\/span>— Death waved a hand. and yet you act as if there is some ideal order in the world, as if there is some\u2026some rightness<\/em> in the universe by which it may be judged.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point<\/em>—”<\/p>\n

My point exactly.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Terry Pratchett [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “Are You Santa Claus (c. 1900),” a postcard uploaded to Flickr by user “pellethepoet.” (Used here under a Creative Commons license; thank you!)] From whiskey river (which this week pulled a handful of favorites from Hallowe’ens gone by): Every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable and finally has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[247,1393,5,251,3459,3477,4159],"tags":[142,295,646,1389,1447,3461,4820,4821,4822],"class_list":{"0":"post-20685","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","9":"category-06_writing","10":"category-poetry-writing_cat","11":"category-horror-06_writing","12":"category-fantasy-06_writing","13":"category-essays","14":"tag-terry-pratchett","15":"tag-annie-dillard","16":"tag-halloween","17":"tag-ghosts","18":"tag-marilynne-robinson","19":"tag-robert-bloch","20":"tag-grace-butcher","21":"tag-katie-cappello","22":"tag-spirits","23":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/areyousantaclaus_pellethepoet_thumb.jpg?fit=389%2C600&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-5nD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20685"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20697,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20685\/revisions\/20697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}