Falling in love with ghosts...

What did your favorite ghost tell you? 

An atheist from the soul asking this like your neighbor psychic lady - crazy, I know. What is life if one has never had a ghost?! A ghost when I say it is not the remnant of your rather unwanted self after death. It is my memory. A person that I used to be, and I miss being while I loathe being it at the same time. It is far beyond my reach. Maybe those memories were kept wrapped and cushioned in a dusty-moldy corner.

It might not be much that you miss. It might just be the way you talked or laughed or never bothered. It must be the way something came so easy. It might be the way life used to dance around. It might be the people who defined you. Those ghosts are worth falling in love with. 

Waking up one day and realizing your life has taken on a direction you never wanted to wouldn't be the same tiring ritual if you had the wistful past in mind. It gives a sense of identity. It takes your hand and dances with you. It would swing you around like you belong there. All those faces would wander in-front of your eyes while you are hopelessly to catch up or fall behind. If to love is to let go, then you would have to let go of that dream of yours. You wouldn't. That's just because it is your memory that defines you. It is that which tells you what you are. You are only what you were, you are never what you will be.  

One day, taking up your paintbrush again, you will remember the lives it gave color to. You will remember the laughter and the weeping and the fighting you had with everyone around you when you paint. After all, we have just one life. The laughter which is sprinkled on your way is a nagging ghost.

That realization of your passion when you take up a pen with vigor will take you by surprise. Some faces you never want to forget and some you would hate not to forget would haunt you forever. All what you were would seem alien. Then one starry night, the ghost would lift you up and give you a hike to your life. It would pass in through you and be in you. 

The jasmine strewn rails in your neighborhood park and the noisy children who wouldn't let you read would come and be in your soul forever. To love is to cherish forever. Cherish that ghost of yours. While you flutter in the cosmic soup with paranormal realizations, you would want to thank that little buddy of yours for keeping you warm and sane. 

Memories weave lives like thread. It's the three sisters of fate trying to bundle you up. When you behold another human, you see them. Yet, you never know them. Even they might not know them. Once you share a smile, that smile is savored by your ghost. With noise that could wake up a whole neighborhood, your friends would walk by with you. A dear friend would steal all your birthday candy and hide it in his lunch bag. That one hugsy friend would keep you warm and bubbly and that brat of a kid would annoy you again (you might land him a punch). 

The ghost is who you were, hold onto that thin air buddy of yours. It might pass through you without you even noticing it (after all, it is a ghost). Yet, it would send a shock through you. It might be a gut-wrenching or a heart-warming thought. It would tell you to look up in the stars and wonder if today was going in your ghost's ledger. Years later it might recite it back and you would remember the ache. It would brighten your eyes like you have been smitten.

Fall in love with those ghosts...those silly ghosts which will never let go of you. That conditioned, determined troublemaker who won't let you give up.

Buhbye..