On Ghosts

October 2008

A ghost is a thing of place. It haunts a haunt. It is the soul’s way of definition, to gain boundaries the body no longer provides. Space must be filled. This is why, when my ancestors arrived in the Dakotas, they confronted a land already inhabited – by vast aboriginal ghosts, terrible and cacophonous silence encoded in the wind and the tall grass. In Appalachia, the ghosts have boiled down into every stream and hollow, each dense pocket of else isolated from the rest. Here on the prairie there are no delimiters; the spirit diffuses endlessly, or recoils screaming low across the tips of leaves, catching in its first shelter. Build a fire at the crossroads to keep them warm.

This is the origin of the dream catcher, built first on the shores of deep and restless Superior. By those chill grey waters, they serve as a lightning rod, a complex, suspended universe to catch and quiet a roving soul. Deep waters are always restless, and strangest to those who travel upon them. He who is buried at sea takes the whole ocean as his mausoleum; his window glass is every surge and wave.

For these reasons, beware the man without a country, whose soul must claim the sea and stars.
Put no faith in guards of borders, and fear most trouble crossing water.
We found this child among the rushes, babbling and dreaming;
Seven years and still he speaks no word of human tongue.