I had an unusual dream last night--which is unusual in itself, as I did not dream at all whilst I was taking Xanax at night, given the deep state of sleep induced by that drug. It's kind of like being put under before a wisdom tooth extraction--you don't know nothin' till you wake up in some room, wondering whether you've had the extraction yet, or whether you just nodded off for a minute. Anyway, I've been off the Xanax for a while, not by choice but because a prescription is now required, and I've been having a number of vivid dreams, as if they are trying to catch up after the downtime.
In this dream, the dead--or ghosts--had "learned" to co-occupy living hosts. The idea seemed to be that, on the model of evolution, ghosts had acquired the ability "to become", to crawl out of aimless, powerless limbo and enter into a flesh and blood vehicle, to live, move, and have their being in partnership with an already animate vessel, which would then contain their essence, and itself be altered by the new presence.
Okay, my dream did not give me all the scientific or biological or metaphysical details--or if it did, I can't remember them--but anyway, it seemed an inventive sort of Idea.
Curiously, the host, in this way, becomes haunted--haunted, and intimately so, by a ghost. The host, of course, has no idea that it has been entered and now shares its identity with a ghost. Nor, for that matter, is the ghost any longer a ghost, any more than the human being is any longer an ape. It is an equal partner in a single vessel.
Ghosts, as we know, do not ever shed their history in previous sentient life. Rather, they tend to be obsessed by their history, unable to release it, and therefore unabl e to leave the world. Or at least that's how many of the ghost mythologies go. Wandering, troubled spirits, you know? People who do not know they are dead. In short, even as ghosts, they are haunted by themselves.
Now, suddenly, the corporeal dwelling is haunted not only by its preexisting shapes and patterns, but by the new, foreign shapes and patterns as well, and likewise for the new bodily occupant, such that the one and the other hardly know who is haunting who!
Lol. Well, if I were a young man, with talent and energy, I'd see if I could formulate a cohesive horror story of all this; but as it is, the whole thing is starting to give me a headache. And so I will sign off in hopes the matter will haunt me no further.
In this dream, the dead--or ghosts--had "learned" to co-occupy living hosts. The idea seemed to be that, on the model of evolution, ghosts had acquired the ability "to become", to crawl out of aimless, powerless limbo and enter into a flesh and blood vehicle, to live, move, and have their being in partnership with an already animate vessel, which would then contain their essence, and itself be altered by the new presence.
Okay, my dream did not give me all the scientific or biological or metaphysical details--or if it did, I can't remember them--but anyway, it seemed an inventive sort of Idea.
Curiously, the host, in this way, becomes haunted--haunted, and intimately so, by a ghost. The host, of course, has no idea that it has been entered and now shares its identity with a ghost. Nor, for that matter, is the ghost any longer a ghost, any more than the human being is any longer an ape. It is an equal partner in a single vessel.
Ghosts, as we know, do not ever shed their history in previous sentient life. Rather, they tend to be obsessed by their history, unable to release it, and therefore unabl e to leave the world. Or at least that's how many of the ghost mythologies go. Wandering, troubled spirits, you know? People who do not know they are dead. In short, even as ghosts, they are haunted by themselves.
Now, suddenly, the corporeal dwelling is haunted not only by its preexisting shapes and patterns, but by the new, foreign shapes and patterns as well, and likewise for the new bodily occupant, such that the one and the other hardly know who is haunting who!
Lol. Well, if I were a young man, with talent and energy, I'd see if I could formulate a cohesive horror story of all this; but as it is, the whole thing is starting to give me a headache. And so I will sign off in hopes the matter will haunt me no further.
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