I can't believe that it's already August... the year has just flown past. Given the nature of my job, all I can think is, "Damn, it's practically October". October is our busiest month on the job. I had to come in early last Tuesday and I had a good long chat with a couple of guys on the day shift who are just about the nicest people I know. It helps that they are cat people- they were cracking up at the fact that Fred and Ginger had followed me all the way across the property when I came a callin'. Ginger promptly plopped herself on the cool floor of the room in which we were hanging out. These guys are already starting to set up for our major October fundraiser. There are all sorts of other tasks that are underway, but October's big ticket events pretty much take over everything until mid-November rolls around and everything is stowed away again.
The post title is a play on the Spanish translation of "August", but it also has some bearing on the job. Last year, we had the infamous "Waste of Big" incident, in which a new hire, a huge man by all accounts, didn't finish his first night because he was scared of the dark. He wasn't the first individual to check out before his first night was over- before I started on the job, a guy they'd hired called the supervisor to tell him that he'd seen a ghost, and that he wasn't going to stay. The supervisor, who lived about a mile from the site, told him that he'd be right over. When the supervisor got to the site, the new hire handed him the company cell phone and said, "I saw a ghost, I can't stay here. I quit." He was so freaked out, he ran the red light at the parking lot exit in his haste to get away.
My take on ghosts is that, if you don't believe in them, they don't believe in you. I've watched too much classic "Scooby Doo" to believe that ghosts are anything more than corrupt real-estate developers trying to scare people away so they can put up a condo development. Every so often, on the job, I'll get a call from "ghost hunters" who want to do a "paranormal investigation", and I refer them to the Public Relations department so they can get a denial from someone above my pay grade. A couple of weeks ago, I met an attractive, intelligent woman who firmly believed in ghosts, and as "proof", she cited a photo that her son had taken at an abandoned site near their home. I was diplomatic enough not to say anything about "double exposures" or the like... no need to inject an acrimonious air into an innocuous conversation over gin-and-tonics.
Ghosts, not scary, but the fact that it's already agosto? Terrifying!
I'll come work there. I like cats, and the dark! Also, orbs.
ReplyDelete~
I don't mind "haunted" places. I'm basically as agnostic as they come, but I can't quite shake the idea that places can have ghosts. I've been places where there was something up with them. Just something...up with them. I can't say what. Just sometimes I will get an impression and be aware that I am "not alone". Ish.
ReplyDeleteIt isn't an uncomfortable feeling, and I can't quantify it in any way. But some places just smell different, have an odd temperature, and somehow give off that something "ghosty". Like an ozone and off-milk smell. I dunno what it is, but I've felt it in schools, museums and some houses. Just a random "stuff happened here" thing. I know that isn't rational. But there is a subjective-ass thing afoot on some places. Since I don't actually "believe in it", I'm a little sheepish anytime I feel it. But I do.
I'll come work there. I like cats, and the dark! Also, orbs.
ReplyDeleteCome on back to New York! The Lew Rudin golf center awaits!
I'm basically as agnostic as they come, but I can't quite shake the idea that places can have ghosts. I've been places where there was something up with them. Just something...up with them. I can't say what. Just sometimes I will get an impression and be aware that I am "not alone". Ish.
It's a perception that a place has absorbed "psychic energy" somehow through the events that transpired there, isn't it? Buildings, inanimate objects can seem to have "memory". Have you ever read Clark Ashton Smith's Genius Loci?
I got ghosts but they occupy my head rather than a physical location. Analeptic alzabo is one helluva drug.
ReplyDeleteDeath, to quote that noted philosopher Clint Eastwood, is a helluva thing. It's been the driving force behind so much superstition and mythology for a hundred thousand years. One day someone is there, the next day they're gone. Forever. It's the finality that freaks people out, so they seek ways to cushion the brink of eternity. Heaven, Ghosts, all sorts of 'afterlife' just so stories all mean essentially the same thing: Fear not, for the end is not really the end.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I liked the treatment of death in Delany's "The Einstein Intersection", where it was an irreversable, profound change in a being's status - they were gone forever from HERE, but they had become something else - a sort of weird mashup of reincarnation and afterlife, combined with graduation.
I got ghosts but they occupy my head rather than a physical location. Analeptic alzabo is one helluva drug.
ReplyDeleteSmut for Autarch!
Death, to quote that noted philosopher Clint Eastwood, is a helluva thing. It's been the driving force behind so much superstition and mythology for a hundred thousand years. One day someone is there, the next day they're gone. Forever. It's the finality that freaks people out, so they seek ways to cushion the brink of eternity. Heaven, Ghosts, all sorts of 'afterlife' just so stories all mean essentially the same thing: Fear not, for the end is not really the end.
Yeah, the idea of just ceasing to be does scare a lot of people. I don't think that an eternal afterlife to which you can consign people you disapprove of is the best response, though.