Spectres

I see the ghosts of those long dead.

People I knew, people I didn’t. The ghosts not of their earthly bodies, for why on earth would a spirit not of this world take on a physical manifestation of a vessel that burdened it? Dragged behind, became diseased, held it down, let it down. No, bodies are nothing but dead weight to those who go on living. “What then can I see if not bodies?” I hear you ask. It is difficult for you to understand unless you have seen it, but then most of you will have at some point, experienced that which I view with an eye for the invisible.

I see times of life spent. The old shaking their heads in disbelief as the lively go about their tawdry business. The young carrying on as usual, never willing to pass on entirely. And infants, oh the poor devils! They clumsily, slowly pass us by, completely unable to comprehend what is happening around them. Toddlers who have never known such loneliness, unable to cope without parental guidance.

The deaths of everyday people are as unextraordinary as their lives had been. Individual spirits bustle around, each treading a path, so much more important than everyone else’s. No one really ever gets anywhere now because no one really went anywhere when they were fleshy and breathing. If only they had worked together before hand, they would not have to fight one another’s individuality now. And what of those who did combine their efforts?

I see the ghosts of civilisations long dead.

There is a feeling of Rome in the air today. Rather of occupation, an authoritarian mist rasping at my lungs as I breath in the smoke rising from a burning Cantii village. Authority whiffs of charred wood, straw, flesh. I look on desensitised to this injustice, to unnecessary demise, for though it is close it remains so far away, past. Ah! And here, a stream of newly-deads to clog my peripheral vision from the east. They too victims of occupation, of injustice. Still so far away, but of now. I keep hearing about this Holyland, a marvellous place it must have been before it became a killing field. There can’t be much left to fight over. Or was it Hollywood? Maybe that was it, I’m told that it was great once too. But I digress. There is more to see right here on my doorstep, so many spirits overlapped.

Romans come, they conquer, they obliterate, they redesign, displace. Then they fight amongst themselves, stretch too far, believe their own propaganda, lose their grip and collapse. The same has been true of Imperial powers throughout most of history. But in their wake something has changed. The people conquered no longer exist, replaced and redesigned as a new fanatical force, dictatorial, revolutionary yet traditional. They look to pre-occupational times as a golden age and take inspiration from the spirits of those long dead, of faiths and ideas which perhaps should have died with them, perhaps not. Held back in time by the resurrected bodies of the past, dragging the bodies of the living into the endless ebb and flow of an inevitable cycle.

I see entire populations meandering around, displaced. Spirits drifting on tides. Every now and again those at the head of the great waltz of souls will be plucked out of the misty air, finding themselves marching once again at the head of a procession of the living, one they little understand, relate to, and this time at gunpoint. Jesus is forced to carpet bomb Baghdad, Mohammed to fire out-dated Russian rockets into Israel. Saddam Hussein just sat back while Nebuchadnezzar was pushed over the border to occupy Kuwait, and Karl Marx became puppet king of a superpower until he too was sent to the Gulag to die a second, much more damaging death.

I see the spirits of the great leaders and thinkers of the past. They are so downtrodden, eroded, archived, recycled for the hundredth time. They trudge with the sadness of bereavement - grief for the lightness they once had, now responsible for the horrible ends met by many of those who drift and dance with them.

I see the ghosts of ideas long dead.

Heavier still than the lightness of people, the transience of civilisations and the regrettable weight of thinkers, lie their concepts, notions, ideas. When nothing I see is visible, these things (or things that once were) can only be differentiated by their stillness - hung, drooping in the weight of the feelings they give birth to.

Behind the peaceless, placeless rest of great leaders and thinkers loom the ideas for which they must be abducted. These are very different to the other deceased things, though I can be sure they are dead or it wouldn’t be possible to resurrect them. Currently visible are the crumbled fragments of greater notions - community, self-determination, human rights - all are missing large parts in the world of the living, all are hanging dismembered in the deathly visions I behold.

Sometimes, someone, somewhere, still at least partially alive, will catch their breath suddenly struck by something bigger than them. They do not know it, but struck is exactly the word to use, for they have unwittingly walked right into a thought, hung statically in their path. It makes me laugh every time I see the unsuspecting taken aback. The frown growing across their brow, eyes sometimes gaining clarity, sometimes glazing with fear. Though they can be found in many places you would suspect, often thoughts hang in unlikely spots. Small flats, alleys, fields furrowed and forgotten. The dead avoid them, their presence is a constant reminder of something only the living wish to remember.

All that is visible to me is unchangeable. These people and their worlds are at the mercy of our memories, and even with this being so, one odd fact lends itself to all the spirits in the world. They all died for the same few reasons. Dredged up spirits can only act on what they know, what has already been, what has already killed them once. Those who live for recycled doctrines all die a doctrinal death. There is no individuality to any of it. No life-achievements can save you from this forced communal, eternal and ineffectual plodding round in circles, a fate we all face because we all fall into the same traps. It is human nature it seems. So spare a thought for all those I have spoken of, and for the torrent of new spirits that appear to me each day. And finally spare a thought for your own soul, for as far as I am concerned

I see the ghosts of a future already decided.

By David Nettleingham

Copyright August 2006