Carhartt

It was four years ago this past Tuesday that you went into the sickhouse and never came back out. You told me it wasn't your last rodeo and I spent longer than I'd like to admit being angry at you for unintentionally lying to me. Whenever I look up at the ridge of Leavenworth Mountain, toward the ruins of Waldorf on the other side of that ridge, where we scattered your immolated bones, I smile bittersweetly, thinking perhaps you're really not that far away after all.

When I saw her kneeling to snap a photograph, I saw you. Right down to the Carhartt ranch jacket. The same hair-before you got sick and the chemo shaved you bald-and the same smile. Even a similar lack of chin. I tried very hard not to stare.

With purposeful stride I put some distance between us. Once I rounded a corner, I caught myself trembling slightly. As with most any time I see a ghost of memory, I found myself rattled. There were so many things I wanted to ask and tell, but she wouldn't have understood. But part of me thinks I should be grateful for that doppelganger in the Carhartt ranch jacket that looked so disturbingly like you. If I allow myself a moment of superstition, I could theorize it was your way of letting me know you're really not that far away after all.

Broken Winged Backflash

I knew an angel once. An archangel with a broken wing. His fleshbound shell was afflicted with renal failure. The set of kidneys his body came with started crapping out in childhood. He had transplants, but, eventually, those kidneys, a gift, the last true act of altruism, ceased to function as well. The entire space of our acquaintance he was on dialysis.

So it goes. After all, which of us is perfect? Besides, perfection is boring.

I was dancing with the dead for money when he tried to get on the transplant list again. It became a motivating factor for me in that gig. Years later, the bruja told me that doctors told him he was not eligible for another transplant. He resolved to die at the next available opportunity.

Whether or not that opportunity was a heart surgery he underwent whilst I was helping my father put his mother in the dirt, thousands of miles away, is conjecture that could be debated until the stars fall out of the sky...

He was a hero of mine. One of the smartest cats I ever met. There was a way he carried himself, perpetually smoking and almost always dressed in black suits that made him infinitely cool to me.

"Don't let that suit fool you," Madam Lung said to me one night. "He is a dirty, dirty, man."

True to fact. Even his memorial announcement described him as an unrepentant letch. Both the bruja and the gypsy had some stories. In fact, the best opening line of one of the gypsy's stories involved a tawdry moment with our mutual flawed angelic friend. It would be uncivilized, and, stealing a friend's tale, to go into much more detail.

So it goes. I learned long ago that not all angels are from Heaven and not all demons from Hell, and the wise know to make allowance. He was dying in hurried degrees since the day I first heard his name and probably a lot longer. The fact he was endeavoring to go out with a bang instead of a whimper-maybe a little of both?-is perhaps the metaphoric and metaphysical license given to one with so little to lose.

***

When I see ghosts, they tend to be donned in a topcoat of breathing flesh. Inevitably, this seems to always happen when I have obligations. I suppose this makes sense; I live where others come to vacation and tourism sustains more places around here than it doesn't. What do you do? My day had started with a group from Argentina and a beautiful dark-haired Brazilian girl who thought peachy was the coolest English term she'd ever heard. I've met monks from Bhutan and midwestern housewives.

What I was doing at the time seems trivial, even if perhaps it wasn't, but I stopped dead when I saw him. He was older, which seems logical, given we'd all aged in the years since vials of ashes were partitioned out amongst our lot. I scattered my share at Netherworld the last night Sabina and I were out before moving to the mountains. The spectacles were the same shape and, instead of the shaved-head Lex Luthor look of his final years, he had the shoulder-length sandy blond hair like when I first knew him.

"Jibril?" I whispered to myself.

The others had spoken of seeing him in dreams. Stories of his phantasm haunting the juke joints we all used to frequent. I never had any such experiences, partially because I dropped out of that scene shortly after he died. It seemed to me we'd already said our goodbyes, so it was unnecessary to see him again. 

And yet, there he was, behind the Voodoo mask of someone with similar features, with perhaps longer hair...

The man smiled warmly at me. Jibril's smile. It got me to react, at least realizing if I didn't watch it, I might just start staring. I inclined my head respectively.

He was joined by a woman on the way out whose countenance was somewhere between the bruja and the gypsy. A warm sort of familiarity that spoke of history, which might be uncivilized to inquire about, but might come out over late-night coffee whilst the rest of the world slept. It got me smile bittersweetly. 

Usually, when seeing a fleshbound phantasm, I find myself rattled. The rest of the day is just a little off in ways language fails to describe. After this encounter, I found myself strangely at peace. My friend, that archangel with a broken wing, never had occasion to see me seized with the madness of leaving the greater metroplex for the mountains. Although I believe it is vanity to second-guess the dead, perhaps in that moment, he finally got see, and that familiar smile said it all.

Letter to a Phantasm

"And I miss you
 like the deserts miss the rain..."-Everything but the Girl

The girl on the bench had long, thick flame-red dreadlocks. I could hear her laugh as she spoke into her phone. I had to double-take, then a triple. I knew the truth even as I scanned her features and listened closer to her voice, her laugh; it wasn't you, just a cruel trick of the light, memory, and a fool's hope.

I fucking swear, mon ami, your phantasm haunts me more than that one x of mine, visions of my mother, my grandmother, or even Jibril. Part of me considers disliking you-strongly-for it. But can I really blame you? You've been dead and gone two years now, and I cannot imagine you wanting to unintentionally torment me with your ghost at every other turn.

It's not like I've not dealt with death before. I grew up on a farm. I began to understand the First Nobel Truth, the realization of suffering, of death, by the time I was six. I danced with the dead for money once, hearing some horror stories of the reality of disease process-some of the drinking nights I had from those tales border upon mythic.

Jibril had four kidneys in his body, and not one of them worked, despite my efforts to help him get a new one transplanted. My grandmother tried an aces over eights bluff against mythical death gods with an experimental surgery instead of accepting the sentence delivered by the aneurysm slowly chocking her eighty-one year old heart. My mother was devoured by a rarer strain of cervical cancer by no other reason than bad things happen to good people, even if good and bad are constructs invented to make sense of the roll of the bones chaos.

All three of those deaths rattled me profoundly. You know that. Be that as it may, when it comes down to brass tacks and bedposts, I can say I saw them coming.

But, you, dearheart, were Hell and gravedust, and cobwebs, and razorblades, and maggots. You were the surprise. Right the fuck out of nowhere, wrong place, wrong time, surprise! you're dead! You know how much I loath surprises.

I suppose if you'd survived the experience, you'd probably had been far more upset about it and I'm just being selfish. After all, I only lost a friend. You lost your unborn son in the deal too.

The First Noble Truth is the realization of suffering...

It's taken me years to reconcile my heretical faith, it seems. That had started with my mother's death, the year before. We were just starting into corresponded discussions of our theological evolutions shortly before your rollover. Even though the first Noble Truth of Buddhism speaks to the chaos inherent in the universe, I confess, I was getting a little nihilistic right after we all put you in the ground. It took some time for Humpty-Dumpty to pull himself back together again.

I remember that tarot card oracle you cast for me, four months after my grandmother died, when you said I would find enlightenment. You once referred to me as your mountain bodhisattva. Both statements I found a bit ballsy, and giving me far more credit than I might want or deserve. Although, amusingly enough, Lee agreed with you about my enlightenment once, by virtue of how and where I choose to live and who I choose to share my life with.

Of course, I've often maintained that the cat who says they're enlightened clearly isn't. The only way I could really accept your mantel of being enlightened is if enlightenment means I don't know every fucking thing and content myself with the mysteries, knowing for every question answered, like weeds, ten more spring up in its place. Every time I think I know, that I've arrived, as the buzzword goes, I find more riddles and set off to solve those, because ignorance leads to suffering, which perpetuates samsara.

I'd say it's because we stand upon the date of your accident, and those five days your family kept your shell alive on machines after the fact that is why you've been within the mathematics of my thoughts as of late, why I saw your phantasm in the shape of a traveling girl in a set of dreads. That would be a lie. You're within the walls of my skull a lot. I think of you as the one friend who didn't think I'd completely lost my mind when I announced I was over and done with the city and moving to the mountains and if anyone got in my way I'd eat their fucking liver. Slowly.

"Ah so. And you find why I disappear into the mists of mountain tops and people who breath the word zen as deeply as they breathe the air," you said.

It endeared me to you. But there were so many tiny things you did to do that. I could get so angry with you I'd want to spit coffin nails-you fucking up and dying on me is a shinning example-and you'd go and do something and I'd remember why you were my friend. Why you've always meant so much to me.

You didn't wear your seatbelt, and I can never forgive you for that. But, you very well know I do not believe in forgiveness. Forgiveness implies that it never happened, when, oh, but it did. That is denial, and not in the context of the great African river.

I believe in acceptance. The understanding a thing happened and cannot be made to unhappen. So it goes.

I accept that you're gone. That we'll never finish those theological discussions we started. That we'll never have that teahouse date we always spoke of. That your son will never address me as Dirty Uncle Bob. That we'll never swap any more stories or I'll never get to skeptically harass you over the tarots. I accept that all I have are the memories and the stories.

And, although it rattles the fuck out of me every time it happens, I accept seeing your memory ghost superimposed upon the flesh overcoats of strangers. Were I to allow myself a moment of superstition, I would theorize it's your way of letting me know you're about, perhaps making sure I'm still reptile zen as ever. Even if that isn't the case, I find myself grateful for it, if, for no other reason, it keeps me from even trying to forget you.

Not that I could, even on a bet...     

The Demon's Mask

She's only about the nicest girl I've ever met. Any time we've encountered one another, she's nothing short of polite and gregarious to a fault. She constantly invites us to parties or other opportunities to hang out.

I am terrified of her...

It's not her, but me. My neurosis. It's not because of misanthropic tendencies, but breathing nightmares from my past. See, when I see her, I don't see her, unfortunately. I see someone else.

I see the face of a bygone lover who taught me profound lessons in fear and violation. The one who reminded me that there really is no justice. The one who invaded my home once and tried to attack me with a shard of broken glass. The author of some of my worst nightmares.

How do you explain that to someone? Tell them you're somewhat frightened of them because they look entirely too much like a personal demon? It's rather unfair to do to someone, but, in context, fair really has nothing to do with it. Just as there is no justice, there's no such thing as fair.

Any time I see her, I am nothing short of civil. I was raised with manners, of which, at times, have been called anachronistic, and she is only about the nicest girl I've ever met. Still, I walk away from the interaction shaking off a chill, trying to exorcise a demon from my psyche who wears the mask of someone who has nothing to do with it.

Read Backflash

It's been a long time since someone looked at me like that; her pale blue eyes moving side to side, as if reading a book. The facial features were similar and her hair, though spun-gold honey blond, was just as curly. When we made eye contact, I found myself taken back to that one summer, that one month. I confess to conflicted emotions, but perhaps that has to do with something that was said into the either recently and then was attempted to be erased.

Really think I wouldn't see? I do not forget these things. One should know better.

There was the bittersweetness; remembering the afternoons in the French restaurant over mussels or that night when Lovecraft was read in the manner of a lullaby. There was the resentment; remembering how it ended confusingly, the asinine French-film complicated games, which were played in the after-ash. There was the acceptance; knowing that one month was quite wonderful, but, it would seem, that was all that was to be allotted, and where I am now is light years-geographically and mentally-from where I was that one summer.

The interaction lasted but a heartbeat, and she was gone, leaving me with memories and a dysfunctional tale to tell. It was queer being looked at like that again; her pale blue moving side to side as if reading a book. In the after-ash, I find myself left one lingering question; what exactly was she reading as she looked at me?

An Afternoon of Walking Ghosts

Bruja,

It was a cruel trick of the light that she looked so much like you. My heart leap and sank all within a beat. The brutality I wanted to inflict at her unintentional deception bordered upon sociopathic. The type of stuff that would make witch-hunters, Spanish inquisitors, Jack the Ripper, and Nazi death-doctors cross their legs and blush.

But it wasn't her fault. There are only so many ways a bipedal body can be put together. Similarities are bound to exist. Some hapless half-bald monkey cannot be blamed for bearing a passing resemblance to a dead woman. It would be wrong action to make her the focus of my ire over the fact you're gone.

For half a heartbeat, I was elated. A year and half can feel like forever in context of the dead, and, in may ways, it is. There would've been so much to tell you in playing ketchup. And, of course, the one question I've wanted so dearly for you to answer;

Why didn't you wear your fucking seatbelt?

***

Fucking indian,

I haven't seen or spoken to you in almost twenty-two years, not since back in North Carolina. But there was who-you-would-be-here-and-now from those phantasms of memory; the long black hair, the obligatory Kiss t-shirt, and that swagger, which some girls would throw themselves at you for and some boys wanted kill you for. I could even see the anger in the eyes; equal parts that abusive childhood of yours and growing up as one of what you called a conquered people.

I don't think about you as much as I used to. The stories I tell don't feature you as often as they once did. Perhaps that is unfortunate. Maybe that's what nearly twenty-two years without a glance or word will eventually do. I'm not sure I care enough to find out the difference.

I always swore if I saw you again I'd punch you, though I struggle to remember exactly why anymore. The motivation for malice at seventeen seems trivial at the precipice of forty. The effigy I saw swaggering across my field of vision would not have appreciated my fist in his throat.

Besides, punching anything hurts! I could never understand how you did it without the slightest wince, but you were always cooler than I. Or at least that's what I believed all those years ago.

What I saw took me back to those last days in North Carolina. Me and you were born in the same state, and, after three and half years of misery, my father saw fit to move us back. Part of me wonders if you resented me for my escape from that stifling wasteland of white supremacists and kudzu. There are a lot of things I wonder about you when you arrive within the mathematics of my thoughts. But after nearly twenty-two years, neither those questions, or the answers you'd perhaps give, really matter.

Doppelganger

I thought I saw you the other day. The details were all there; the gait, the color of hair and its style, the build, and tone of the flesh. I had to do a double-take, and then another two or three after that, just to be sure.

There were differences, of course. That's the way of it. No tattoos. The scars that you carved into your legs and arms on those neurotic nights weren't there. The eyes, slightly concealed behind spectacles, were different. Not the look of a feral dog, but of someone just trying to get where they were going.

I breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn't you, and I don't know how I would've reacted if it was. Hopefully, that unintentional doppelganger is as close I'll ever get.