The Racket #17 : GHOSTS
Poster by Brad Kayal
03.26.2018 - ADOBE BOOKS - 7PM
A ghost by any other name.
We wish we had a ghost story to tell.
We've heard them, don't get us wrong, stories of kimonoed legs peeking into an open doorway, businessmen slipping down a hallway in a cloud of ethereal smoke, rooms so consumed by haunting that reality stretches to the thinest veil.
Though we've never experienced the paranormal that we know of the stories passed down from friends and strangers alike have become a part of our memories, a part of our narrative arc. They've become shadowy forms that linger around corners, peer up at us from the darkness at the bottom of the stairs, whisper darkly from the trees. Other's ghosts have become our own. Their stories, now a part of ours.
We are haunted, as we all are. By the clinging specter of emotions wreathed loosely around us. By the heavy drag of memory, pulling against us as we push to move forward. By the gauzy curtain laid across our thoughts, our emotions vague and mysterious beneath.
Where we seek phantoms and poltergeists, we have only found nebulous existence, obscurity where we seek focus. And though this time is particularly ripe for emotional phantasms, is it too much to ask for a sense of a relief? A sheet with two eyes cut out instead of a the sluggish process of healing? A wail in the night instead of our internal monologue's ceaseless chatter? Our emotional phantoms will always be there, frighteningly dependable, but we must work and wait for some alleviation of the perpetual pressure.
And while we do wait, we will indulge in other's stories of creaks in the attic, chills along their spines, figures at the end of their beds. Perhaps, someday, we may replace our current haunting with another.
