I'm Right Here

You never know I'm there.

Do you?
That's ok, I'm not mad!

I think sometimes you might sense me, if I 

(accidentally or maybe on purpose) 

brush to close to you.

 You have the greatest little habit of looking quickly to the side as if you'd seen something.

I love watching you do that.

But I don't think you know it's me.





We've been together for years now!  I know you so well!
But you never know it's me.



I don't want to scare you -

Occasionally, I have to admit,  I get this overwhelming desire to reach out and touch your arm as you're stepping into the shower, just throw you the tiniest bit off balance, just to see how you'll react.
Wouldn't that be funny!


No don't worry, I won't do that.  Mostly because I'm not allowed to!

(I don't like trouble.)

We live in different worlds you and I

Let me tell you there are a lot of rules where I live.

Here are some:

No Touching

 No Speaking Unless Thru Electronic Devices

 No Frequent Moving of Objects

Some ghosts are luckier, they get to make as much noise as they want.
But I don't want to just haunt, I want to....
....have coffee or a drink with you, share a napkin,
 go to a museum and look at the pictures and ooo and ahhh and complain and admire.
I know that you do these things, I've seen you.
And I was there, but....not really.

I remember the difference!

Oh well, I still enjoy being with you.
Maybe you can see me, a little to the side.

LOOK!



I'm right here.








******************************************************

Ghost Vacation

We took our family out to Tombstone Arizona and

had a pretty good time.

The locals were a bit vicious,
 but that can be expected of a former town that is a bit jealous of all of you that still live in a normal town with real people.

But ordinary people used to live here doing
everyday things just like we do at home.
They seem so foreign and antiqui-y now -
It kind of gives you a sense of....perspective
I guess.









We saw some strange stuff that's for sure.

The definite highlight was when Dory got her photo taken

at the old timey photo place.  She had her own money

and she new exactly what she wanted the picture

to look like.  She even told the photographer

how to take the picture!

Ready?

Here it is:





Cute huh!




She's a pistol, always has wanted to be a drinker
like her mom!  Just like Mama we told her!

But it does kind of creep me out, the way that

 people can be in one place and fill it with all the stuff of their lives, and then in 100 years, poof! it's all gone. Like they were never here or if they were, they would be like aliens to us, they were so different.

And we'll one day become the ghosts.

I don't think I'll go back to Tombstone, that  feeling was too weird.  I don't like thinking about that kind of stuff, boring!
Next year we'll go to Hollywood California, and look at the movie stars!
There's no ghosts in Hollywood,

is there?

******************************************************

The Boy in the Wood

Don't look too closely.

Things fit together too well when you
correlate so closely.
 "Coincidences" will tend to
pop up and
events that seemed completely
disparate
 begin to make so much
horrifying linking sense.

The Veil is lifting.
********************************************************

I remember when I told mama and papa about the boy in the wood.

They really didn't want to hear, so I tried to speak louder.

He always sat on the stump right by my trail,
 I whined.
He just stares at me and doesn't move and
doesn't say a word.
He makes me feel funny.




It's a free wood, they replied, smiling behind their faces.

I know, said mama, make friends with him!
What?
He's a lonely little boy.
I've seen him, papa added.




But he's got a knife.
So? they replied. Try harder.
He looks at me strange.
Don't be conceited.
He looks at me mean.

What would Jesus do? Go watch t.v.

I spent the rest of the summer, afraid to go out, afraid I'd see him, over there with his knife and I'd have to walk right across the grass and go right up to him and stick my hand out and say:

 Hello, will you be my friend?

Finally I just had to use my wood path to visit those faerie friends who lived deep in the forest.

I wondered if he would be there.

I thought about him as I peed.

To get to the trail, I had to pass that sour smelling, flowering bush-tree.  It hid the trail from our house.

 I saw the stump.

He was there!

 I spied him carving foreign designs into the stump between his legs.  

He hadn't yet seen me, so intent on his work;  head bowed, dirty clothes.

I approached with stealth.

Finally I was close enough to smell him.                                                     Oranges.  Sweet.

I very very carefully sat back in the weeds on my heels and watched him work.

It was peaceful and violent and I wondered if he would carve the wood down into the ground.

A breeze came up and I saw him sit up straighter.

He turned.

He saw me.

For years we stared into each other's eyes.

And then he was gone, into the woods, away away.

But I want to be your friend! I screamed after him.

The stump.  The stump.

I ran to look at his carving, his hacking, it will tell me All!

I saw a heart.  His heart,

my heart gashed and gouged there, in that wood.

He had made this for me to find.

A message, a token of his friendship!

After I got the bright idea of getting the burlap bag to pull it on, the stump became much easier to move.

I keep it with me even now.

No, no,  I never saw him again.

See, the stump, it's right behind that table.

You can look at it if you want.

I don't have to see it all the time,

but I like to know that it's there.

Things fit together too well when you

correlate too closely.

 "Coincidences" will tend to

pop up and 

events that seemed completely

disparate

 begin to make so much

sense.

Don't look too close.



******************************************************

Our Home

I

remember having lunch out on the porch when it was summertime and so hot

you

could barely breathe in the stuffy rooms of our childhood home.

Mother would be waiting at home to make lunch, remember? 

Sometimes she even managed to greet us with a smile, posing prettily by the marble fireplace in the basement.

I think I hated school even then:  a holding pen for the maladjusted and the unlearnables.

At least our school was.

Mr. Marston used to throw his baton at our heads when he was angry, remember that??

What an asshole.  

I learned a lot from him.

I was always so sure that it would be ME 

that got out, I would be the one who made it far and 

wide and only looked back

with a crooked grin,

what a sick joke to be the one left to 

tend this pitiful hearth.

Yes I used to stand by my chair for hours!

Uncle Rog never let us sit before him.

I made the best whiskey and soda, he said!

I liked sitting on his lap by the fire.

I wonder if Aunt M. ever sat on Uncle Rog?  Everyone said she loved herself best.

She "never had a chance", I never knew what that meant.

In life? In love?

      

And the legends surrounding that bear skin rug! Outrageous weren't they?

I had  to give that thing a wide berth when I went nightly to the wood shed, let me tell you!

Did you ever look into it's eyes?

Some days Auntie M. never left the davenport at all.
 Just sat and stared.  In her prettiest dresses.
 Listening

to the sound of the ivy attaching itself to the chimney.













**********************************************************************************

monsters

I don't know about my honey.
Sometimes he's just mean.

I used to think he was really cute, but that whole "thing" he has is  getting a little old.

The thrill just isn't there anymore, you know, let's be honest.

I mean, I've  had his babies.

 The twins, you know!

Everyone knows what happened to them-

This is a picture of a  replica of the REAL twins, cost 69.95.

I sleep with it every night.

They're cold.

And my honey's brothers!  Dicks, all of em!

Hanging around like they're something special.

Eldridge borrowed 2.50 from me last week, never paid it back.

What do you think??

His ancestors were something else.  Very glamourous and "up to date".

You wanna see another picture of my honey?

Oops!

 I hope my honey doesn't know I still carry "his" picture in my wallet.  

Jason's definitely the "one that got away"

Here's my honey again:

Maybe we can work it out, I don't know.

He is pretty special to me.

The Quick Walk

I never  thought it would end.

The trudgery,
the drudgery
of that walk.

I felt as though I had been moving forever, I
could barely remember a time BEFORE THIS.

I saw the slanting streets pitch off on one side.
I saw the
 fathomless mining pit darkening in the gloom on the other.

I was trying to get home.

Yes the streets slanted, they
were so steep
I felt like
a mule or a very lame horse huffing and puffing
up that hill.
It was late and dark and chilly and sad.


I was trying to......
well, I guess it doesn't really matter anymore.










Because I never made it.











So I get to hang around here,
yes forever.
This town, this street, this hillside.
I know it very well!

I'm not bitter. I don't hurt.

Everyone's got to go sometime.

I get to see the local ghost tour, that's

something.

(Every night)

Someday maybe YOU"LL be walking
up this hill.
Trudging and Drudging.
I'll speak to you,
whisper by your ear.
If you're lucky.
If you linger.
If you'll spare some
time for me, I'll
flow through your hair.

whoooooooosh.

I told you it doesn't hurt!
Cry baby!

Try not to make it
too quick of a walk, ok?

Math is Lovely!

Do you like me?
Am I smart?
Am I worthy?
Can you tell me?

Here I'll help you -

I tell myself things no one else would ever dare:
"You're gorgeous!"
"You're brilliant!"




Also:

"You are really incredibly stupid!"
"You're an irritating pet of mass consumption!"




How do I tell which voices are real.
Who do I know to trust.

You?
 Me?

Where is the impartiality?




                                      Maybe I will take an average of my assests.

50% ignorant and boring   50% beautiful and intelligent.
This ratio will of course skew one way or another
depending on things like
 my emotional state, or
the weather, or
the lack of caffeine or other substances.






Can you look me in the eye
and tell me I'm a jack-ass?                                                      


Can you turn around and
tell me I'm a genius?

Haha, I can and do
say that and
 more and worse and
 better
 EVERY DAY.

                                                    

  So am I the sum of all these parts?

Let's try a grand Home-made mathematical equation:

                                    

                

I am:
 all that I say about myself + everything you say about me + (all that I really am) - [mood] - [weather]  x [intoxication] = ME

And I will say that that is Lovely.