a short speculative step on a long journey towards the disposal of ghosts

earlier this year I wrote about how I'd "seen" my parents in a vivid dream.

the link is ... http://emotionalblackmailers.blogspot.com/2007/04/i-dreamed-about-my-parents.html

before and since, i've often mused on the possibility of there being ghosts, but their existence still seems entirely improbable

for a long time i hoped or rather fantasized that there might be a "soul" that drifts around for a while, and so my parents could be out there catching up on all the myriad marvels that evaded them in real life

i.e. "had we but world enough and time, this coyness lady were no crime ..." etc etc

whenever i fly somewhere i try to see the clouds and the bright sea through my mother's eyes

my father's ghost, i'm certain, would be content to linger on any sunny street corner, to listen avidly & to watch the human pantomime, as i like to do in other countries

but the best i can hope for is that i, and my siblings, and our children, are "the ghosts", and so i think again of that nice little poem by thomas hardy ...

Heredity

I am the family face;
Flesh perishes, I live on,
Projecting trait and trace
Through time to times anon,
And leaping from place to place
Over oblivion.

The years-heired feature that can
In curve and voice and eye
Despise the human span
Of durance--that is I;
The eternal thing in man,
That heeds no call to die.

the only thing that's sacred is life itself