damn

I love this opening:

Hello, my name is Angela, and I’m a ghost. 

Not the chain-rattling, woooo-oooooh kind. Or the leaving-a-faint-smell-of-hyacinths-in-the-air kind. I’m not going to haunt you. I’m not actually dead. 

Now I have to figure out why this is true.  I could say I'm unable to change, to reconcile past with present, or that I'm invisible or insubstantial in some way.  I could spin the truth until it said that.  But I don't want to go that way.  I'm actually feeling very embodied at the moment, and I think I'm dealing with the past pretty well.  So there has to be some other reason.

Maybe alter it a little and make ghosts instead of being a ghost?  That's much easier to make true; all my virtual furniture could easily be ghost furniture:

My name is Angela, and I make ghosts. 

Not the chain-rattling, woooo-oooooh kind. Or the leaving-a-faint-smell-of-hyacinths-in-the-air kind.  I don't kill people.  I make furniture.

I like it, but not as much. 

So what else does it mean to be a ghost?  Besides the physical traits, which I don't have.  Or the not-letting-go traits, which I don't want to work with.  I'm certainly not elusive.  I do a few archaic things, but not in an archaic fashion.

I could have a best friend who's a ghost.  Making Sheila a ghost would be easy, too.  But that story already stalled out, and I'm not sure I could make it work now.  Plus, I'd want to cannibalize what I've already started on that one, and that's cheating.

Damn.

So, how much help am I allowed to get here?  I would never want anyone to write for me, but a conceptual sounding board would be pretty damn useful right about now.

10 grand pianos

Of course, now that I can write, nothing comes out.  I'm starting to reconsider my plan.

I think I might go back to where I started.  What was versus what is, and the negotiations between the two.

The space left behind by Graphic Design is now the home of 10 grand pianos.  They survived the flood, and then a water pipe broke in their storage space, and now maybe half of them are damaged beyond repair.  Or beyond what they are worth to repair.  It's a goddamn tragic poem next door.

T-Shirts

I don't even need to make a screen for this.  I think I'll use paper cutouts.

I love t-shirts.  Love love love.

(Technically, this shouldn't be tagged I made this, because I haven't yet.  But I will!)

Raygun

I needed to host this stolen image somewhere.  If you want one, you can get it from Ray Gun.

Ghost Picture, part 3: The more you know

While Wikipedia surfing as preparation for commie pinko writing contest, I discovered that sodium thiosulfate, the active ingredient in most photographic fixers, can also be used as an antidote to cyanide poisoning.

Ghost Picture part 2

Something else to ponder, besides the nature of ghosts, is what kind of thing I am writing.  I know that it's nonfiction, which just means that anything that isn't true or real needs to be framed as such.  (One of the interesting things about nonfiction is the lengths it can be stretched.  I can tell a story entirely from my imagination, as long as the story is framed so that the reader knows.)

I could write a biography or account of a historical event.  But that seems unlikely.  I'd have to, you know, learn stuff first.

(Although, I could write about something I already know.  Like photography.  Which happens to be the subject of the prompt.  This deserves some thought.)

I still probably won't write a biography or historical event.  But I might write an instruction manual for silver gelatin printing.

Which means that a photograph is exactly the right prize to send in. 

Brother Mark and Brother Augustin, St. Albert's Priory, Oakland CA

Ghost (disambiguation)

trace image, ghosting

lingering effects (like the rocking of the ground when I step off a boat) when I have not yet reconciled then with now

transparent

insubstantial

barely-there

a ghost of a chance

phantom limb syndrome

light flares

light leaks

ektoplasm-green

dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria

He's pretty cute for a Ghostbuster, she says

dreams

delusions

hope

There is always at least one sense missing- a ghost might be seen, heard, but not touched.  Or heard and smelled but not seen or felt.  Or felt but not seen or heard.  If you can see, feel, hear, touch, and taste, then it is real.

Has there ever been a ghost one could taste?

Am I cheating?

marshmallow ghosts

Pac-Man

Halloween

Back to the whole tasting thing.  The ghost in that silly Nora Roberts book I just read manifested as the smell of flowers, occasional sighting, and occasional writing-on-the-mirror-in-steam.  Lots of ghosts can be heard.  And sometimes ghosts can be felt; they run ghostly fingers across your arm, or fling furniture around in a ghostly rage.  But taste never comes into it.  Which means that the best method of ghost-detection is to try to lick your ghost.  If you can lick it, it's not a ghost.  Free advice, from me to you.