by Mackenzie Epping
Speculation has dimension. For me, the words on the page are the residual trace.
Ghost, as in that which haunts. As in campfire stories. As in a peculiar house. As in occupied and occupier. There (still). As in a watchtower. Or something one just lives with: ah, there goes the ghost again. As in a gunshot, glacier’s melt. Unsettled and unsettling. Be warned. As in my words. As in my tongue—where the ghosts of words reside. How many ghosts tap-dance my teeth each day?
Ghost, as in supernatural, paranormal. As in those burned at the stake. As in every name. There is no way to make sense of terror. As in a cult. As in dark matter. As in a shared belief. As in the translucent fish that live deep in trenches in the ocean abyss, in every whale stuffed with plastic washed ashore. I make ghosts. Birch leaves skitter the wind. Footprints break snow crust and ice and leave a trail of blue shadows. Dead languages, now unspoken, some languages now not even shadows. As in unfound fossils. Every two weeks a last speaker dies. As in, once upon a time. As in, every story needs a body.
Ghost, as in stones. As in a dry riverbed. As in time is a canyon and I walk upwards and downwards and north and east and south and west. As in, I started walking the Berlin Wall at a ghost station. I couldn’t help but feel as if I was never alone, even where the city edges gave way to the fields and forest (here, a sign on the road marked Berlin’s official end) and I spooked myself with my own imagination. Is a ghost less frightening when it becomes familiar? A trinket kept in a pocket. I can never decide: is a ghost, like a tree, a witness? Or is a ghost the consequence? A faded scar.
Ghost, as in something (someone) (someplace) shared. As in, Did you hear that too? I asked the dead last night to show me a sign in my dreams. I haven’t yet seen or heard response. Instead, I keep having house dreams (common; symbolic of the self)—never my home, people in all the rooms. As if ancestors and ghosts are one in the same. As if any ghost could be separated from my feet, from the dirt underfoot.
Ghost, as in breath. As in holy, as in spirit. A glimpse from the corner of my eye, the landscape itself. Does a ghost still lurk when no people are around? When no one is left to speak its name or recall its sight? I do not, as in the movie, see dead people. But I am certain I have encountered ghosts nearby. This is just a hunch. A reticent feeling upon entering. Uncanny, Unheimlich. As in another German word tucked in, a wavering apparition—Heim, home. As in the ghost, daily, I ignore. There, by the lake. There, by I-35 and the river. How tethered is a ghost to land and place? Can a ghost cross an ocean? I imagine a ghost transiting on a ship (though this seems unnecessary given ghosts’ permeability and capacity for flight). As in sea smoke. As in will-o-wisps. In silences. In epigenetics. An expression. As in, how far will the average ghost follow me?
A dwelling can be a “place of residence, habitation, abode,” as Berlin and Minneapolis have been for me. Or also, “a stupor” or “a staying in place” (Online Etymology Dictionary). At times, dwelling can be dangerous. “Ghost” is part of a larger project that asks: in an era when patterns are increasingly unrecognizable, when the weather no longer matches memory or stories, when walls, new and old, continue their violences, when language falters, what does it mean to bear witness? I’m interested in speculation as a process and action. Place and time layer and fragment, become warp and weft. Speculation has dimension. For me, the words on the page are the residual trace.
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Mackenzie Epping lives in Minneapolis. She graduated with an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.