how to disappear completely
that there
that's not me
i'm not here
this isn't happening
in a little while, i'll be gone.
the moment's already passed, yeah it's gone.
and i'm not here.
this isn't happening.
i've had a lot of dreams about ghosts lately. ghosts are showing up everywhere. in my dreams i'm seeing a lot of dead people, some of whom are actual. i've had several visitations from my dead grandmother, which is odd because i never really knew her. i've never been close to my extended family, and most of my memories of her, if any, are vague childhood images rather than adult interaction. but in my dreams, her identity is not only suggested but is visually accurate. and the other ghosts, the anonymous ones, are classic film representations -- ethereal, translucent, their substance seemingly composed of cloud matter or a hovering fog . . . but they aren't all white as a sheet. i've dreamed them in color too. the first ghost was hanging out on a curb in downtown chicago or detroit, wanting lodging in a vacated studio apartment i was checking out for myself . . . s/he was a mixture of neon blue and yellow, kind of a borderline green vaporous hue. one night i woke up briefly and saw this same figure perched on my wicker chair, changing shape slightly around the edges like the poor-quality film cast its fuzzy subjects in the first silent movies. she wasn't in color in my hallucination; rather, she took the off-white blank space of a subject on film negatives. but last night was the most graphic and explicit. the walking dead were taking over the world. i saw a whole community of skeletons, every bone intact, walking around in a rickety mob like they had just climbed out of a mass grave. but the one who seemed to be the leader was the scariest because he was covered up -- he had a raggedy pillowcase over his head with two jagged eye holes cut out. he looked directly at me and i saw only a deep black void in the would-be sockets. it occurs to me now he was playing the grim reaper, only he had no scythe. his face resembled the figure in the (in)famous painting by Munch; we know it as The Scream (which is, in fact, hanging over my bed). but the whole masquerade of halloween costumes was simply not that -- the living people were over there, retreating to the edge of the world, while the undead materialized in a barren muddy field, leaving human infrastructure awash in debris full of dead things such as you would find after a flood: fish tails and snail shells and feathers and bone.
the only connection i can make to all this debris floating around in my subconscious and coming to the surface of my dreams is that, if i were to die right now, i would have a lot of people to haunt. salman rushdie, in his book the satanic verses, defines a ghost as "unfinished business." my life is one long string of unfinished business, loose ends, lack of closure, unresolved conflict. and it became apparent to me after japan that i have a lot of ghosts at my back. the loss of daniel was the loss of everyone. one year later, i am still panicked beyond my own comprehension at the prospect of never seeing him again. fuck, i still have a dead guy in my cell phone book (i never took dave's number off my list, and i can't bring myself to delete his last text message to me from two days before christmas two years ago). the onset of this depression last march was simply a transformation i had to go through to be placed in a living hell. i just never died. maybe that's why i constantly feel like a zombie, stoned and experiencing life in slow motion. so i suppose i bring the dream haunting upon myself -- i choose to live among my dead lovers and keep my ghosts close at hand.
that's not me
i'm not here
this isn't happening
in a little while, i'll be gone.
the moment's already passed, yeah it's gone.
and i'm not here.
this isn't happening.
i've had a lot of dreams about ghosts lately. ghosts are showing up everywhere. in my dreams i'm seeing a lot of dead people, some of whom are actual. i've had several visitations from my dead grandmother, which is odd because i never really knew her. i've never been close to my extended family, and most of my memories of her, if any, are vague childhood images rather than adult interaction. but in my dreams, her identity is not only suggested but is visually accurate. and the other ghosts, the anonymous ones, are classic film representations -- ethereal, translucent, their substance seemingly composed of cloud matter or a hovering fog . . . but they aren't all white as a sheet. i've dreamed them in color too. the first ghost was hanging out on a curb in downtown chicago or detroit, wanting lodging in a vacated studio apartment i was checking out for myself . . . s/he was a mixture of neon blue and yellow, kind of a borderline green vaporous hue. one night i woke up briefly and saw this same figure perched on my wicker chair, changing shape slightly around the edges like the poor-quality film cast its fuzzy subjects in the first silent movies. she wasn't in color in my hallucination; rather, she took the off-white blank space of a subject on film negatives. but last night was the most graphic and explicit. the walking dead were taking over the world. i saw a whole community of skeletons, every bone intact, walking around in a rickety mob like they had just climbed out of a mass grave. but the one who seemed to be the leader was the scariest because he was covered up -- he had a raggedy pillowcase over his head with two jagged eye holes cut out. he looked directly at me and i saw only a deep black void in the would-be sockets. it occurs to me now he was playing the grim reaper, only he had no scythe. his face resembled the figure in the (in)famous painting by Munch; we know it as The Scream (which is, in fact, hanging over my bed). but the whole masquerade of halloween costumes was simply not that -- the living people were over there, retreating to the edge of the world, while the undead materialized in a barren muddy field, leaving human infrastructure awash in debris full of dead things such as you would find after a flood: fish tails and snail shells and feathers and bone.
the only connection i can make to all this debris floating around in my subconscious and coming to the surface of my dreams is that, if i were to die right now, i would have a lot of people to haunt. salman rushdie, in his book the satanic verses, defines a ghost as "unfinished business." my life is one long string of unfinished business, loose ends, lack of closure, unresolved conflict. and it became apparent to me after japan that i have a lot of ghosts at my back. the loss of daniel was the loss of everyone. one year later, i am still panicked beyond my own comprehension at the prospect of never seeing him again. fuck, i still have a dead guy in my cell phone book (i never took dave's number off my list, and i can't bring myself to delete his last text message to me from two days before christmas two years ago). the onset of this depression last march was simply a transformation i had to go through to be placed in a living hell. i just never died. maybe that's why i constantly feel like a zombie, stoned and experiencing life in slow motion. so i suppose i bring the dream haunting upon myself -- i choose to live among my dead lovers and keep my ghosts close at hand.