Ghosts (3/30/07)

I think I like history because I like ghosts. I’ve always liked ghosts; probably not more than any other kid. However, there are a few things that accent my love of ghosts which may not be so typical. For instance, the house I lived in as a child was a funeral home before I lived there. It was a large Victorian house with lots of nooks and crannies, and it was while living there at age four that I learned what a funeral home was. Even then, my definition was lacking, because I thought funeral homes were like graveyards. I thought that funeral homes were where dead people were stuffed into closets and window seats (especially window seats) willy-nilly and then left to do whatever it is dead people do. That is to say, I thought the dead people were still there. This didn’t make me frightened, only cautious.

I may also add: my mother took me to the graveyard for fun. I don’t know what normal kids do with their moms on summer vacations, but mine were spent making rubbings of old gravestones. I liked hot pink gravestone rubbings particularly.

And, too: my mother was a storyteller and historian, working in historic farms in Illinois and across North Carolina. When I wasn’t tensing up in a 19^th century attic convinced that something was moving, my mother was practicing one of her macabre traditional Appalachian folk tales on me. These were stories where family members killed each other and then came back from the beyond to recount their harrowing tales to unsuspecting children. I never learned the correct lesson from these stories. Instead of “Love Thy Brother”, I invariably came away with “You never know what houses are haunted, or which girls/inanimate objects are possessed, so watch the fuck out.”

I live by a graveyard now, one of the most exciting bonuses about my move to Chicago. It’s old and gigantic, and when I ride the el to work I love to look out the window and look for patterns in the gravestones. Sometimes they look like words. In the winter they gleam like mirrors in the snow.

I’m just now finding out about all the ghosts in my neighborhood. I live up the street from the Green Mill, noted hangout of Al Capone. And when I stand on the platform at my el station and see the roadies on the fire escape of the neighboring Aragon Ballroom—they’re standing on the exit to Capone’s private box. Charlie Chaplin also lived in my neighborhood, and shot a film here before taking flight from Chicago. What is most interesting is that my neighborhood has long been a refuge for people of all races and walks of life. Displaced Appalachian coal miners moved here around the same time that Native Americans were relocated. Immigrants from all over the world have found their home here. Now I’m here. I’m part of that.

But for all the theoretical, or intellectualized, ghosts that are all around me I have yet to see an actual ghost. An actual ghost like with translucent white robes and all that nonsense. It seems unfair to me, and I’m always a little jealous of people who claim they have seen ghosts. I also have a tendency to disbelieve. I feel like, I want to see a ghost really bad. I am open to that. If a ghost were to appear before anyone, wouldn’t they choose a willing spectator? Thus, if a ghost has not yet rattled its proverbial chains at my bedpost, why should I believe you?

The thing I am most frightened of is that they do not actually exist. Ghosts are my last bastion of spiritual belief. I don’t believe in anything that can not be seen, except ghosts. It’s just that the idea of real live ghosts (so to speak) is so exciting that I’m not willing to give it up. There comes a point as a child when you can no longer believe in all the characters your parents have created for you: the easter bunny, santa claus, the tooth fairy, etcetera. Even so, ghosts persist. As an adult, I have gone further to question my belief in anything, namely God. If I give up on ghosts, I will have given up on it all. There will be nothing invisible left. So I cling to the hope of seeing proof positive that specters are real. I collect ghost stories of friends and hang on their every word because maybe one day one of them will be too believable to be brought down. And I do a double take when I walk in my ancient neighborhood, because you never know what’s haunted. So look the fuck out.

Everything Looks Yellow In Reverse

Some memories are kept and treasured as they occur. Others are pieced together from what we see in photographs, what we hear in the stories of others. The convenience of all this is that we don't have to be faced with our former selves in the true sense. We can be kind to ourselves in that way, and remember only that we were good or funny or misunderstood.

My family rarely keeps videos, so I don't have much actual proof of the way things were; the way I was. So watching old Christmas videos is hurtful and heartbreaking as much as it is endearing. Case study: 1991 Christmas in July in Illinois. I will be nine in just over two months. I am heard before I am seen--hollering at my father, my shriek of a pre-pubescent voice booming a soprano cannon over the general roar of the extended family. I flail my skinny arms in a plea for attention. I open presents unappreciatively, literally dropping each one after I have sufficiently inspected it for imperfection. I do not say thank you.

And then my mother. Clinging to the siblings at goodbyes, making a (convincing) show of loving my father. Close up on the sisters having a secret conversation. Barb looks around, concerned. My mother looks over her shoulder, then turns back around to touch her sister's face. Two years and Barb will be divorced, driving from one coast to the other to move right next door to my mother. Seven years and my mother will be divorced too, a confirmed lesbian. Tearful goodbyes, embraces. My mother leans in and kisses the window of the car Barb has just gotten into.

Now it's our turn, piling into our car to make a trip I don't remember. My dad wearing a bizarrely out of place dashiki. Me in a Madonna t-shirt, my soft-spoken and long-haired brother advertising the Sex Pistols. And my mother, young and beautiful. Mothers are always more beautiful than you remember them. My grandfather talks up my brother about his upcoming senior year. My dad makes bad jokes. I hide myself behind a wall of pillows.

There we are all on video--proof we were once young, married, alive, a family. These gatherings have dwindled from their former glory to a modest seven or eight. I have trouble recognizing the people in this video as my family, and some of them aren't anymore. I don't know which one is more real.

When I think of my childhood in Illinois I think of car windows and fields rushing by for miles and miles. I think of hot, sticky summers and the smell of grandpa's car (the one he won on the game show). I think of the window seat on the staircase and the adjacent linen closet, both of which I was certain were packed to the brim with dead people. Baseball cards, night walks through town to get ice cream, the movie theatre's popcorn machine, yard sales. These memories are weighty and silent. I don't exist. I can't see my face or hear my voice. The people are frozen in time or maybe move in staccato. All these dutifully recorded memories, so horribly accurate, do not really exist. And yet here they are in all their garish color and sound, declaring their validity frame by frame.

I remember hungry hungry hippos right there by the stairs.
I remember the old-fashioned refrigerator in the kitchen.
I do not remember the sound of grandpa playing jazz.
I do not remember the sound of Z's voice.

The comings are so much more beautiful than the goings.
Everyone always has to go.

Fuckabees.

-originally posted: january 4, 08.

listen up, y'all; it's about to get serious. and by serious, i mean this: mike huckabee is a fucktard. if you are offended by that word, thank sara donnelly for permanently fixing it into my lexicon. maybe you haven't been following the race for nomination or the caucuses very closely, and you're thinking, "why is mike huckabee so bad? he seems cheerful." well friends, let me steer you in the direction of this:




now, if this weren't legit, it would be funny. however, huckabee is really into having chuck norris endorse him. i realize of course that this election seems to be rife with celebrity endorsements (thanks to oprah, i think every white woman in america will now be voting for obama). nonetheless, i appreciate a candidate who takes his/her campaign seriously. this is not achieved by spouting off "chuck norris facts" written by a fifth grader in your campaign ads. the fact that chuck norris is your two word solution to border control does not make me want to vote for you, mr. huckabee. it does confirm my previous assertion about you (see above).

chuck norris aside, this guy is very upfront about wanting to put jesus back in his place: the oval office. i think the last thing this country needs is a baptist preacher furthering us along our path to righteousness in the heathen middle east. i really don't care what he believes in, as long as he keeps it to himself and doesn't use it to say, overturn roe v. wade, put prayer in school, or cast gay people out onto their own island. after all, as the bible says, "when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you" (that's from the book of matthew). the point is this: it is unfair to base policy on your personal religious beliefs instead of what is actually best for a nation of culturally and religiously diverse citizens.

anyhow. it's not just the chuck norris and the praise jebus that get me in a tiffy. there are also such things as his love for guns, his plan to scrap income tax and have 28% sales tax (which i think would really destroy my life as a waitress), and of course: his hatred of my gay homosexual mom and her lesbo life partner.