Ohio. A warm and hazy November day, and my insomnia continues. Tonight I ran around a lake until I tired myself out. Why does the brain go to war with itself? My body is hungry for sleep, yet my soul races around like a crazed puppy, fetching unpleasant memories and scraps of regret for inspection. And my mind turns gullible in the small hours, ready to believe anything.
I believe you believe that. C. and I often discuss what would happen if one of us saw a ghost. It might be the most fundamental test of any relationship. One person sees a spectral figure at the foot of their bed, maybe a flying saucer over the highway or Jesus Christ floating in their soup. Now they stand before their lover, telling them magic is real and it’s all they can think about anymore. And the other person must decide whether to humor them or rearrange their own understanding of the world.
Last night I gave up the search for sleep and watched All the President’s Men at four o’clock in the morning. When played at low volume, it functions as a nostalgic fireplace: typewriters and shuffled paperwork, cigarette lighters and shoes clacking in hallways. The soft ding of an elevator is followed by a mumbled conspiracy that feels wholesome these days.
All the President’s Men is the forensic encapsulation of a portending pause of presidential prudence and to my mind one of the best pre-CGI shot scenes of the drawout in the Library of Congress as well as some of the better reality driven reasons why we “vote”. May I recommend Clark Strand’s book ” Waking Up to the Dark” as a way of understanding why you awake at a certain time of night. As to ghosts..they inhabit what we can’t own and we can’t own what was taken from them. There have been 100 billion persons on this planet before us…am guessing some are tired of what they see and are showing up to say so. Your writing suggests you have not only seen them but you spend time with them.
I was seeing a therapist once and she asked me about my preference for blues and writing like yours. It was pretty easy to answer that I felt that those places are where life is truly lived. Life is not that hard….but without an honest view it becomes something else and beyond our willingness to comprehend and endure. What you and C do is bring the surreal real and do one thing really well which is to “ask”. So..is the magic real?
I have enjoyed your writings and work for many years…met you in a book tour in Minneapolis in maybe 2011. Continued best wishes and many thanks for your continued presence and willingness to produce and promote what is an important voice. Be well.
Steve, thank you for this incredibly generous note. You’ve given me much to consider ghost-wise and blues-wise, and I dig the idea of a ghost as a sensation we carry rather than a vision. Waking Up to the Dark sounds like a fascinating book. I picked up a copy this morning, and I look forward to reading it during these long nights. And thank you for tuning in all these years!