Ghosts in the Machine

I awoke this morning to the high-pitched squealing of running water mingling with the similar timbre of Prince’s “1999”, a tune that never fails to make me feel ancient. Imagine, a year that belonged to the distantly apocalyptic future when the song was a hit in the '80s is now nearly a decade behind us. Far too heavy a thought to be contemplating during the first two minutes of my day.

On to more important matters: who could be taking a shower at this hour of the morning, when all of my building-mates should already be at their offices, doing whatever it is that they do? I wondered if some phantom with OCD had overtaken the adjacent apartment, returning from the afterlife in desperate need of an Irish Spring fix. Perhaps it was just plumbing issues, but I seem to be surrounded by ghosts lately.

For example, last weekend I spent an evening visiting a few of my old haunts, places where I have spent countless hours and more dollars carousing with friends, but for various reasons have boycotted of late. Unfortunately several of my most cherished cohorts have left the area or simply dropped off the radar in the past year, some by choice and others rather against their will, and it still feels strange to be in familiar surroundings without their company. Recently I’ve been constantly reminded of the strange, fateful patterns of our interpersonal relationships, about the seemingly haphazard way in which new acquaintances appear in our lives at precisely the perfect moment, while others fade into the background, always with the possibility of reconnection months or even years into the future.

One of the most enjoyable conversations I’ve been privy to in the past few weeks involved Ernest Vincent Wright’s lipogrammatical book Gadsby. The novel was written without the use of the letter E, a ruse my companions and I attempted to emulate throughout the evening (although I must confess we were infinitely more successful at the start of the night than at its conclusion). On this Thanksgiving Break Eve, I would like to share a piece of the main character’s advice on taking a “vacation from financial affairs” (I expect it will work just as nicely as a respite from the irate grumblings of piano students and their parents):

Go out to a charming woodland spot on a picnic with a bright, happy, vivacious group. Sit down at a corn roast; a marshmallow toast; join in singing popular songs; drink a quart of good, rich milk; burrow into that big lunch box; and all such things as banks, stocks, and family bills, will vanish on fairy wings, into oblivion.