Walking With Ghosts
How many times have I walked this walk?
Sometimes I venture onto the road slightly; sometimes, I skip down the kerb. Come to think of it, I should start skipping in general. Podcast, music or a phone call. I avoid eye contact until the moment I have no choice. A quick lookup, little smirk and then back to pretending I wasn’t thinking about that small interaction for the past thirty seconds. Seeing strangers as skippable cut scenes.
Walking down the same path seeing ghosts. Me of two months ago, me of two years ago, me when my hair was longer, me before I wrecked those shoes, me when I accidentally had a mullet before it was ironically cool, me when I used to talk to you, me when I didn’t speak to you, me before I knew you. Thousands of steps from thousands of me.
When has nostalgia ever done you any good?
I remember reading pshhhhhhhhhhhht what was it called? ‘The Beautiful Mrs Seidenman’ by Andrzej Szczypiorski back when I walked THAT way to the shops. Back when I fought valiantly against the winter by proudly wearing shorts as I WALK. Early on, at one point in the book, if I remember correctly, ‘tesknota’ is mentioned. It will have some weird accents over some of the letters, but who the fuck knows how to do that on a computer? What was that? Most people? Naw, man fuck off. No one knows how to do it, and that’s the end of it.
Anyway, in Polish, they don’t really have a word for nostalgia. The closest they have is ‘tesknota’, which is just a longing for something in the past. It is the bittersweet vibe of nostalgia without the sweet. When I read that word and looked it up, man, it fucked me. Because YES. Exactly.
Nostalgia is a word for walks I can’t take. A sport I can no longer compete in. These walks have lost their sugar. Sucked dry. Empty Capri Suns lying on the concrete. I didn’t walk those walks, surely? Someone else did, and someone else did for fucking years. But surely I didn’t? I have other walks I walk. I walked that way when I used to shop at a Co-op. That’s a Gorbals walk. Man, I’m never going to have that walk in Gorbals again. Ayr steps, Gorbals steps, High Street steps, East End steps, Possil Park steps, West End steps. Ghost tracking.
The locations, the people, the feelings are……. unreachable. They are unreachable because I, now, have never held them in my hands. I couldn’t fucking grip them, even touch them. Gone.
You walk the old walks as an intruder. Visiting a graveyard for memories inaccessible. You can see the faces, but they can’t express anything to you. You know the dates, sort of. Granted, the ganja years may have erased some of the dates, but yano, ballpoint. The memory has been raided. Everything was stolen except longing. The cunts left longing! Why couldn’t you have taken longing with you? Leave me with, I dunno, inspiration or something. It is not a longing for the past, no no no, it is a longing to feel any connection to the past beyond just being aware of its existence.
When I walk, I forget about the ghost walkers; they have become skippable cut scenes...momentarily. Strangers you glance at, never really take them in. I don’t walk hand in hand with my ghost walkers. I forget they are there, and when, unfortunately, I am reminded of their presence, I’m haunted. Haunted by a bunch of …imposters. You aren’t optional when you’re made visible. You’ve been spotted! An inescapable root. Your brain’s kevlar umbilical cord. Your ghosts are head to toe in scrubs, exposing their fists to shove down your throat.
Next time you’re out for a walk, think about how many times you’ve walked that street.
Do you see your ghost walkers?
Cheers