Photos of ghosts

 Photos of ghosts are everywhere… and yet they are not really ghosts, in most cases, they are the living who have ghosted the living. A hundred methods of high-speed communication and all of them lie dormant. The baby boomers boom like wailing babies across social media to all who exist and yet those from whom we want to hear disappear into a static like grey ether. Is it fear? Is it hate? Is it jealousy? Is it a lack of interest? Perhaps it is fear. After all, I look at photos from 2008 and still feel warm from the memory of them. 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016. Then again, 2018 into 2021. All periods of great romance and love… and in 2021, it all stopped. I am not sure if I just gave up, they gave up, I got too old, I moved to a place filled with people to whom I could not relate. I went from a famous university town, Cambridge, Massachusetts, a place filled with secular humanists, to a city filled with Christians and climate change deniers. I love it here, too, but even people who drink whiskey for breakfast won’t look at you unless you tell them you want marriage and kids. 

                  I purchased the new Menzingers album and I am currently listening to it for the first time. It’s classic Menzingers, both vocalists alternating between songs, with meaningful, thoughtful, and emotional lyrics. Most songs have great melodies that will have crowds singing along at live shows. Upon first listen, it’s a solid album. Thank goodness for music and literature. Two things that make life worth living. For me… they ground me, bring me back to earth and remind me of what is real and of value. So many people live only to work, they have no taste in music, they only read books about CEOs or work processes. What a tragedy. I’m currently re-reading Home by Toni Morrison. Absolutely brilliant. It is her second-last novel, published in 2013, and contains elements of almost everything that has come before it. If you have not read her work, please venture out and get hold of Sula or Beloved to start. 


My apartment in Madrid when I first moved in at the end of 2013. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

it's not someone else's fault.

  I see many articles about Britain wanting to rejoin the European Union. I am delighted about this. But people claim they were misled, and that is why they voted to leave. I see people in the US regretting their vote for Donald Trump, and they say they never knew it would be like this. All I can say is that, as a British citizen, I voted to remain in Europe and, later, becoming a US citizen, I voted against Trump. In both cases, it was blatantly obvious to me what the outcome would be. The truth is that Brexit and Trump votes result from the same thing… fear and hatred. It is complex and nuanced, but the main fear and hatred was that of immigrants and immigration, in both cases.                     It is not easy, I understand. In a sense, I was fortunate… when I was eight years old my parents left the UK and moved to South Africa, we were immigrants. Years later I returned to the UK and was ...
Read more

big foot beats Jesus

  It’s difficult to stop laughing these days. Well, we alternate between crying and laughing. First, I see that Elon Musk’s Grok has proved that Big Foot exists, then I see a video about ‘six proofs that Jesus never existed.’ My main thought is… why do people even care? My Theory is that there was probably a radical progressive gay guy who was preaching love and forgiveness, then the Republicans of the time put him to death in the streets for challenging their wealth and stone age beliefs. Of course, it is obvious to any scholar of the twenty first century that the bible is a metaphorical work of fiction… but it is certain that, like any work of modern fiction, the characters and events are based on real events. Someone who preaches freedom of love, freedom of religion, forgiveness, tolerance, acceptance… maybe they even supported the idea of windmills… is certain to be killed by the guys who think they are the toughest and the strongest, and the only ones worthy of having choices....
Read more

their envy

  They drive home from their 16-hour shift in the office and pull into the carpark… then they sit in their cars, engine running, lights on… they sit and sit. What are they doing? It becomes clear, they simply don’t want to go home. They are afraid of the boss all day in the office, and they are afraid all night of the lack of privacy they have in their home. So, that period in the car park after parking their car is the only period of freedom that they have in their day.                     Couples always want single people to date and ‘find a partner’. That is because they want single people to be as miserable as they are. They see the happiness and contentment of a single person and their envy makes them want to destroy it.  
Read more