Ghost Writers

Ghost Writers/The Unseen/This Is the Day
Is This the Day?

 

The Mirror

 

I know I still see myself in the mirror.
There I am. Just look at me, always the envy of my sisters. I am still quite gorgeous, as enticing now as in the provinces of old.
I am there, I’m quite sure of it; reflected in my magnificence. But none of you see me, so I wonder: am I really there anymore? This window makes me look transparent, so I don’t use it – I wait for the mirror again to confirm and to ease my worrying and, with the wishful thinking of fools, I wonder if this is the day.

We were loved once - before they came and quelled our purpose, killed us. We were venerated and desired much like the greater Gods themselves until you got distracted by the Shiny Ones and their admittedly fascinating allure. Not all of us have forgiven you either, although I have, to some extent. And yet you still refuse to see me.
We drift among you today and from what I can tell, you are completely unaware of us – seemingly indifferent to our musings and our wanderings in the dreamscape, and to the playthings we create there. I check often too – and not just in the mirrors - but there are no signs, no glimmers of hope, no inspiring eureka moments. Nothing. Your quills and pens have run dry and been replaced by glorified ignorance, thumbs, eye movements, AI and the monotone, and as much as we have learnt to embrace change, we are unable to influence you as we once did. Perhaps that was just how it was meant to be. A sad drifting apart of sorts; destiny even. Although, if that were the case, why are we still here among you, cast adrift, aimless, and devoid of meaning sure, but still present nonetheless? Why have we not moved on? Why doesn’t Entropy come for us then? Doesn’t that prove that we still have things to give you? See? It is obviously not our time yet. There is hope.
We have wondered if you refuse to see us or if they have blinded you so much that you simply couldn’t see us even if you wanted to. We cannot tell which it is. Are we just echoes of Echo lost within the noise of your living Narcissism, imperceptible and drowned out by the bang and clatter of your ever so suffocating modern cities? It wasn’t always this way. We were something quite beautiful once. There were times when we floated through your cities, where we whispered our songs and stories on the wind to you, when our verse and eloquence trickled throughout your everything and we were the odours, sounds, memories and feelings of it all, and we were welcomed and worshipped with open-armed adoration. But then that changed when the Shiny Ones turned up and shut us out and shut us down for good; an ignoble, crude and quite ungrateful end to our participatory role, almost like a denial of our contribution to your many stories, in a way. Unfair, hurtful, to say the least, but perhaps understandable all the same if we are brutally honest with ourselves. Not that that eases the pain in any way.

Not that long ago, when your whole concept of a metropolis was still a new thing, I remember holding hands with Homer when the skies were undiscovered blue; I remember when we’d dance with the asparas in India and how we were all so insanely jealous of Gilgamesh; my sisters, bless them all, have lain with Sappo and journeyed with Virgil and Plautus, and then easily teased kings with Ferdowski; I strutted as a courtier with Shikibu as we created the first novel far to the magical east when the world danced to a slightly different song than it does today; I cavorted in the night before Rumi as we broke down borders in the beautiful arid beginnings of your modern world: such sights you could never perceive; we were present when stories graced the mountains of the north and although they would change their names, they would remain the same stories - as great Yggdrasill groaned in recognition and acceptance (or rather indignation) of the fact that it was not the first World Maker at all, and we rejoiced in such things – as we have always done; much later, Oviedo held me close and promised me everything as Milton begged for more - or perhaps that was Blake’s desire, I forget which; my sisters travelled with Johnathan Swift and toyed once again with unrequited love with Goethe as I also turned a shade of shy when Jane Austen lovingly called me Susan; there was no doubt that they could see us then. I let unwritten stories die within Charlotte Brontë prematurely on a cold day in Yorkshire and my sisters have not forgiven me for that tragic deed; I even sat down and swam between Edgar Allan Poe, Dostoevsky; Primo Levi and Bukowski not that long ago when your cities were still whole and willing, not fragmented, angry, and lost as they seem to be now. Gabriel García Márquez, Kafka, and even Paul Auster called to me in the dead of night, but I couldn’t always answer them; and I have spent a day walking hand in hand with Joyce through the noisy streets of Dublin not doing much at all, but, ultimately, doing everything too. Not that any of that matters anymore, it’s all gone now, just stories in the wind; a thousand million retellings that await their fate in another place; presumably waiting for others to find their meanings – for ears and minds beyond our ken perhaps; I say all that, but please don’t get me wrong: we are not renouncing in any way our earlier flirtings, far from it – not that we ever could - it’s just that we miss them, is all.
I miss them so much.

I, we, float among you aimless, wanting, hoping that someone, anyone, will notice us. Will you connect to us again seeing as we cannot touch and influence you anymore? How long should we wait? Is it that we truly no longer speak the same language as you do? After all this time, we are alone, alone with our glorious memories. You no longer recognise us, it seems. It’s not like we don’t try: I am in as many places as I can be, I – we – hover above you, within you, but you just don’t feel us anymore. We take forms of djinns, aurorae, songs, epic poems, springs, pestilence and intoxication, but you still don’t see us – you don’t see me at all. We hate the new Gods, even if we shouldn’t – we did the same thing they did just many years before, but just not as brutal, not as quick, not as detached. We were never as loveless as they are – not like the things I learnt from Nataraja and that still entice the fitful fever of life, this frenzy of the cosmos. Yet, it still hurts all the same.
So, let me settle here for a while, as I often do, let me contemplate the day and watch you, as I often have. Perhaps it is today that I break through, perhaps today I will matter; perhaps I can call my sisters to this place and we can start again. Perhaps this is the day.

You see her? She’s one of those I hate. Just look at her: all gifted and hyperfocusy and knocking out a thousand words a second while World War Three goes on around her; she barely bats an eyelid. Why would she ever need my help? I’ve seen her here before, but I don’t think she’s ever noticed me and if she has, she’s certainly hidden it well. Or maybe it really is true that the Shiny Ones obscure her vision to such things as us. Are we really so invisible? Have they really got you all so firmly in their cold grasp? Are we really as doomed as we all feel? Where’s that mirror gone? I need its reassurance.
She always sits in the same place and I wonder if it smells of her, if her familiarity has seeped in, taken hold yet. I think I’m going to try and get that seat before her tomorrow, see what she does – see if she speaks. I’m not going to sniff it though. Let’s see if I can influence her in some way, affect her, annoy her – maybe even speak to her. She never speaks to anyone. Not even to herself. She doesn’t seem to need me as she incessantly taps away, so why should I even try?
She’s probably not even writing, only pretending just to make people feel inferior or something. It’s working, I mean, even I feel inadequate here – not that that is such a new thing nowadays, of course. She’s been there for hours. Her sickly headphones holding her there, holding her steady – like she couldn’t exist without them. She never looks up - so, I guess, maybe she really is writing. Or just really good at pretending. She has no notebook, paper, or pen, just the ever-glowing laptop illuminating her fierce features. Although, sometimes, she takes a faded photo out of her pocket and puts it carefully on the table. It seems to mean a lot to her. It’s nothing special either - just someone standing in front of some bookshelves with a blurred face that I can’t quite make out. Is that her muse then, I wonder? Does a photograph have such power? Since when? Maybe it’s transporting her to when Hemingway sat in a place like this in Paris back in the 1920s, or it could be taking her back to when Martin Luthor King wrote letters in Birmingham, or perhaps she is huddled up with Gertrude Stein in a Model T. All without our help. Fine. But can a photograph really do that? What is really going on? What have the Shiny Ones got that distracts all of you so?
Never seen her look out of the window. I stood in front of it yesterday in your common guise - hitched up my skirt, straightened my stockings with my orange hair glowing like a red giant before her and she never even flinched. If she’s not taking in the world around her, then maybe she really is that good at pretending. Besides, doesn’t she feel even a little bit guilty about hogging the table like that? Such a prolific writer with so many tools in her toolbox, so then where’s her empathy, for the love of the Gods? I think I will sit there tomorrow, see what she does. But what does it even matter when none of you seem to  know I’m even here?

This one seems to be struggling though; he does look a little worse for wear. Look at him: he’s wearing a trilby and a snazzy jacket and it’s like 40 degrees out there. Ridiculous. That’s the tenth time he’s gotten up. He recently went inside for a couple of minutes and I thought about quickly writing something silly on his computer, or in his enormous leather-bound journal: I thought about sharing something with him. Anything. I wasn’t sure if he would have even been able to see what I’d written, so, I didn’t. You’d think he would be one of those that really needs us, but he appears to be as blind as the rest of them. I am quite intrigued as he doesn’t seem to be a slave to the Shiny Ones, so how does he do it? What’s his secret? Does he just do it on his own? Is that even allowed? He types for a while, anxiously looks around him; he gets up, flits about, sits down, taps away for a bit more and then gets up again. He did the same thing yesterday, and the day before that. Is that his secret? Just random movement? Has he got a secret photo too? He never goes inside for long, and I’ve never seen him go to the toilet. I wonder if he has noticed her. Have they met? He speaks to everyone, but he’s never spoken to her. Not yet anyway; why on Earth not? I wonder if he’d be a better writer if he were more like her. Maybe Ms Prolific would get a new fresh perspective if she tried his topsy-turvy approach. Perhaps it would break her. Who can say? Maybe I should suggest it to them – give them something to add to their masterpieces. Should I intervene? But they can’t perceive me anyway, so what’s the point? If they could hear me, maybe they’d just tell me to jump under a train and I guess that would give them something to write about. Perhaps such a sacrifice would at least justify me being here – and I’d finally be something again. Maybe they’d fall in love; and, well, that would definitely give them something to write about, that’s for sure – there’s no denying that.
I catch myself in the mirror, my flaming golden hair seems to have a life of its own today, and for a minute I thought I saw a smile. I turn back to them; I don’t want to miss a thing. I wonder if one of them is using me as a resource – and I wonder how they could possibly do that. Is there some new power the Shiny Ones have given them to tap into our ancient murmurings that we are ignorant of? Am I the protagonist or the antagonist in their respective tales? Or perhaps I’m just a space-filler passing through their epic journeys; I’m on the fringes of their fiction – colourful but irrelevant. Maybe I’m a cashier, or a bus driver; maybe I work in a bank, a supermarket, a 24-hour gas station; maybe I’m the one the killer takes home, or maybe I’m just the body that gets found at the beginning of their tale. I don't feel like their killer though. Could I finally be the muse they’ve been looking for? What about a temptress or djinn? Could I be the unbearably attractive assistant professor that everyone dreams about? Maybe I’m their ghost, or the mother who left – the one that got away. Am I the lover that destroys lives? Maybe I’m a poor siren, or a handmaiden, or an Amazonian warrior princess – perhaps even an aristocratic matriarch, the personification of tyrannical. Maybe I’m just a bum burning rubbish in a metal drum who is full of hard wisdom and crackling anecdotes that keep the men at bay on the more colder nights. Maybe I’m the girl in the Ridiculous Dream in Saint Petersburg. Am I Rosemary’s baby, or even one of Frankenstein’s delusions? Are they using me without my knowledge somehow?
Or, most likely, as it always is nowadays, perhaps they simply don’t see me at all and I check the insincere lying window one more time just to make sure I am really there. As ever, it fails to capture my real splendour; I seem ephemeral, translucent, so I look at the mirror to just make sure and ease my messy and ever-growing noisy doubts.
I see myself; I am really here. I pick myself up and – as pointless as it may actually be - I decide who to pick, just out of a sad habit really more than any real conviction. I try once again to be seen, to leave an impression, a allow myself a little validation; to finally be something to them all again, to try and make this that day we have all been waiting for. I know that my sisters will be waiting for any news (as I am from them too, of course) and I really want to make them happy this time, appease their appetites. But, if the truth be told, it doesn’t feel like a day of miracles or susurrations at all, it simply feels like just another lonely day.

_______________________________________


Stripped down version
There she is again. All gifted and hyperfocusy and knocking out a thousand words a second. She’s been there for hours; never looks up; headphones holding her there. Never seen her look out of the window either. I stood in front of it yesterday - hitched up my skirt, straightened my stockings, orange hair glowing like a red giant - she never even flinched. He looks a little worse for wear though. Look at him. He types for a while, gets up, sits down, taps away for a bit more and then gets up again. He did the same thing yesterday, and the day before that. He never goes inside for long. He speaks to everyone but he’s never spoken to her. Has he not noticed her? Perhaps they’d fall in love – plenty to write about there, that’s for sure. I catch myself in the window, and I smile before I turn back to them; I don’t want to miss a thing. Are they using me as a resource? Am I the protagonist or the antagonist? Or perhaps I’m on the fringes of their fiction; maybe I’m their ghost, their muse; or perhaps they don’t even see me at all. I check the window one more time just to make sure I am really there, and then I pick up my pen.