I’m a ghost chaser.
I find myself
constantly chasing ghosts.
Under the bed, in the closets, in hallways and alley ways
lifting and tossing stones along the way. I sit at bus stops and train stations
and wait for them to come. I get on the bus with them, watching them, hunting
them, but never seeking to demolish them.
I’m a ghost chaser. I
come from a long, personal history of chasing ghosts. Thirty three years,
perhaps. I feel it may be more like twenty-five, starting sometime after I
turned eight.
I realized this yesterday as I was walking through the
rolling gardens of Mater Dolorosa, a retreat center for people seeking a bit of
respite and refuge from their worlds. They come seeking answers, seeking
questions, seeking some sort of peace of mind, or piece of mind. The grounds
are littered with bloody Jesus’. Bloody Jesus. Every so often you come across
an altar with a bright white engraving of one of the stations of the cross;
Jesus falls for the first time, Jesus falls a second time, Mary wipes his blood
and sweat. It’s all, in complete honesty, frightening. Each little station of
the cross has a small wooden bench you can sit on, so that you can contemplate
that particular station of the cross. In between the stations are a few statues
of various patron saints. Diego, St. Paul, St. Bernadette, St. Me…
The small hills rolling underneath the altars are well
manicured green lawns or miniature landscapes of cacti and succulents
stretching out into the sun. There are three pathways carpeted with fallen
leaves from the giant rubber trees that line the area. If you walk slow enough,
you’ll travel through space and find yourself isolated somewhere in the Garden
of Eden, just before Adam & Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge.
And then the gardener starts up his leaf blower and you know
that apple has been bitten.
On one of my walks I spotted a rubber tree standing in a
large open field. The field was not well manicured; it wasn’t cared for by
gardeners. It didn’t seem that it was cared for by the wildlife neither. There
were no small rolling hills, no cacti, not a single blade of green grass. It
was yellowing and dying, like an old letter in an attic that was never sent. Lying
flat and defeated on a bed of dirt, its tiny mouths of dried grass and weeds staring
at the sky like open mouths waiting for droplets of water to fall from the
greedy clouds. Fading away.
I saw it and I chased it.
I was nowhere near equipped to go on this little journey, a
whole 20 some yards away. I was wearing my soft cotton shoes, the ones I wear
to feel light. The weeds’ splinters immediately began stabbing my toes and every
so often I’d get one of nature’s little ninja stars jabbed into my sole. They
kept jumping at my feet, stabbing me, making me look down at them. I’d pick
them off and they’d look at me saying “don’t…”
As if they knew what I was going to discover.
“Don’t”
I did anyway, and I got to the tree, which was encircled
with fading brick. At it’s base, in front of me, a low-laying bench, one to
kneel on – to pray on. It obviously hadn't sprouted from the earth. It was
obviously built, and built well, by someone, sometime.
I thought it was a bit curious for there to be a praying
bench at the base of this tree, on this land filled with bloody Jesus’ and
small wooden benches to contemplate his pain and grief. Yet here, a tree.
I dusted off the bench, as if it were to do any good after
years of neglect, and knelt, looked up and saw the carvings on its branches.
The typical initials and hearts and a few dates. Who were they? Why were they
at that tree, in that field, in that retreat center, in this world, in that
time, in that state of mind. Who were they?
I heard a rustling in the weeds and noticed a few small quail
running through the patches of desert sage that were, despite all their odds, thriving
in the field. Then, an altar appeared. Well, I suppose it was always there, and
always unnoticed. It was a small square structure, with small wooden beams for
a roof and small wooden benches for walls.
I walked another ten yards to it and discovered a small statute of the
virgin sitting, alone and white, on a small wall made of the same brick
surrounding the tree.
I stepped over the bench and sat for a while. At the base of
her feet was a small cactus plant, dying. Strange, I’ve never seen a dying
cactus. I’m sure they die, I’m sure people see it, but I’ve never seen a dying
cactus plant. There were a few other remnants of what I can only imagine were
at one point a small bouquet of roses.
I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be there, so I looked
behind me to see if there were any gardeners chasing after me, waving their
leaf blowers telling me to get out of there. But there weren’t. Instead I
discovered that there was a small concrete path leading right to the altar. It
was broken and some weeds had already penetrated its innocence, but there it
was, leading directly to where I was sitting.
I turned back around and stared at the brightness of the
statue, the lightness of her, singing white in that field of dying yellow.
And I started crying. Not a mournful sob, not a confused
lost cry. It was a simple cry, with no real emotion attached to it. I started
crying in the middle of nowhere, with nothing in particular to cry about. At
that lonely altar in the dead field full of life. I started wondering who else
cried there, why was I feeling their sorrow or joy or whatever it was that was
driving my tears out of me.
Staring at the dead bouquet of flowers, I felt compelled to
arrange them. They still smelled like roses, but they were hardly recognizable
as roses. Skeletal. How long had they been there?
Then I realized… I can’t help but to think about ghosts all
the time. Everyone’s ghosts. Living ghosts, dead ghosts, ghosts who want to be
thought of and ghosts who want to be forgotten.
Who are you? What haunts you? What galaxy of vast infinite stars
lay in your eyes?
Who was here? What was their sorrow? Why did they cry, why
did they come to this place and these grounds? So many questions about ghosts
haunting the halls, the beds, the grave yard in the rolling green hills, the
lit windows downtown, the busses and the bus stops - each one of them leaving a
lingering scent. But I’m not afraid, I’m never afraid. I’m curious, curious to
know what stirs inside of this world, living and dead. Curious to look into
windows and see the other side of the world that doesn’t know I or you exist.
Living in sorrow, making cups of coffee, parting bread, slipping into cool
sheets in the middle of the night, staring at walls, being the person the world
doesn’t know.
Ghosts, all the time ghosts.
“Don’t,” the blades were telling me. Was I ready? It didn’t
matter anymore, I’m here. Chasing ghosts.
I chase them down, look for them, want to hold them and
comfort them and tell them they can haunt me if they want to, they can seek me
out in dying fields and barren hallways, in passing glances and carried off in
clouds of violet sighs, in old letters and photographs that fall at my feet
when I open books.
I’m a ghost chaser, I come from a long personal history of
chasing ghosts. I myself am a ghost, I suppose.
I feel like I’m restless. I’m constantly shifting and
traveling and redefining which way is up. I’m never still, stirring and
tumbling constantly, inside of me. As if the nerves in my body are those broken
concrete paths being penetrated by dying weeds and small patches of desert
sage. I’m constantly searching them, hacking them down, clearing them away and
then watching the weeds take them over. Crossing them again, pulling at the
blades, standing aside and watching them take over again. Finding my way
through to liver rubber trees with ghosts that hang from its branches, kneeling
at my spleen, rolling through my lungs, taking naps in the caves of my temples,
sitting still in my intestines; tumbling, tumbling, tumbling and at night
laying in the grass, in the middle of my chest, staring that the stars that
illuminate my brain. What ghosts am I chasing?
Just as I see the world filled with ghosts, my body is an
inverted universe – this is where I exist. Bleed and bruise I’m sure to do, but
the millions of particles in me are a universe, condensed in meat and bone. The
energy inside of me, the energy that is me, pushing, breathing, thinking,
beating, is me. My skin, nails, hair, everything grows and heals and scars from
the inside.
The world external another universe, breathing into me,
pushing into me. The world external, my world internal, energies like a magnet
pressing us together creating more energy.
What place is there for ghosts? Maybe this is why I’m always
chasing ghosts, what place is there for them in the ever constricting space
between our warm bodies and the cool universe? What of the ghosts, of their
stories, of their memories and open windows…
I’m a ghost chaser.