Ghosts. It’s difficult to know what to say about them. Certainly I’m not the type to believe in creepy-crawly, ‘boo’-type ghosts, but I do believe ghosts exist.
Here’s the rub. Like I may have said before, places change gradually over time (as do people), but memories of places remain for many years. Once I talked with you about the way it felt to wander the streets of Wellington after a long absence, and the way it felt to be a part of a new place that evoked old memories and past events. It is the shadows of things that have been that I see as ghosts.
Ghosts are shadows of former selves that lodge themselves in our memories, only to stir when the right trigger manifests. They sit there unnoticed and quiet, only to rise up into our consciousness when they’re called to tie us to the people we were.
There’s another way to liken it. Have you ever met an old friend after years of absence and you don’t immediately recognize them? It happens to me sometimes that I’ll hold someone’s face in my memory, but when I see then after a long separation they’re completely different. What usually happens is that their face will kind of ‘pull into focus’ as my mind replaces the memory with the way they now appear. I always find it a strange and slightly disconcerting experience, but seen as it happens time and again it must be normal, right? At least for me that is.
A ghost is a different kind of disconcerting, but similar because it is overtaken by the here and now, and I mention it because I’m writing this in a pub in Melbourne. Besides the fact that it’s goddamned freezing in this city you’ll need to know that I’ve been away from Melbourne for about a year, and I’m back in town to drop off a copy of the thesis to my supervisor (as promised, a very long time ago).
You should also know that I was miserable when I left here. Absolutely. Fucking. Miserable.
So it’s strange to be back. Strange because all those memories of who and where I was have all but faded into my new life in Wellington, but there’s still this residual ‘something’ that’s hanging around about my time here. Not a bad something, but a set of memories of places and things that have changed, in some cases beyond recognition, in the short time since I left.
In other words, the ghosts of a former life remain, but both who I am and what this place is like have changed.
Yesterday I told a friend that the world is no bigger than the width of one’s arms, and in a selfish sense that is true, but in another way it’s wrong. Because I have proof the world ticks over daily without my intervention. So while the ghosts of my memory travel with me, the real world beyond my fingertips ticks over, unaided.
I find that both comforting and disconcerting, because it’s good to know that change will always await me whenever I travel to and from my former lives, and bad because it makes me wonder about all those lives I could have lead had my path been different.
Ghosts are to my mind these reminders we place for ourselves on the landscapes we inhabit. Sure I’m selfish enough to believe that the things I reach are all there is in the world, but I bring with me the people I’ve know and the things I’ve seen. They provide me with guidance and reassurance, and allow me to preserve the memory of times I’ll never experience again (or wish to again, in some instances).
All in all? It’s been a good few days, I know now I’ve slaked off the history that forced me out of here and back home. I can tell that the ghosts of what was this life have faded into the background. It’s a good feeling, liberating.
Wish I brought my heavy coat though, this place is making Wellington seem positively tropical.