SPARK

Ghosts <click to play audio file>

Kasey Coyle — Ghosts
Inspiration

Quentin Paquette — Visitation
Response

Somehow, being on the road makes it more likely, particularly at night on an otherwise deserted stretch.  Maybe it’s from being in the transition of travel, or the isolation, or the separation of self as I become a body that drives and a mind that ponders.

There’s something fugue-like in the movement.  The dotted lines keep a steady underlying tempo, announcing the exposition.  The poles count off their own interval, as their hanging lines crescendo and diminuendo.  The reflectors and mileage markers highlight particular phrases.  The growth beyond the shoulder approaches and retreats.  The tires click off divisions in the pavement.  All under one constant: the moon keeping pace, shining steadily through the passenger window.  Clair de Lune.

At times, it can be hard not to find your breath syncopating, or your pulse, each to their favorite theme.  I suspect even my eyes must mark time as they jump to focus on each aspect as they appear.

I struggle to maintain my own focus here.  This is not to say focus doesn’t occur, only that I don’t get to decide on the topic.  I can’t make plans, or consider blueprints, or develop a cohesive argument, or place myself in exterior time at all.  And the interior time expands to a critical point, and an inversion, and now I have become internal to it.  And the people I once knew well but have since lost contact with ride in the car with me.  Some I travelled with for a day, a weekend, a season, a phase, a commitment, a job, a kiss, a campaign, a promise, a post, an office, a crisis, an awakening, a secret, a cigarette, a lie, a dare, a drink, a taxi, a bed.  While we ride together now, I relive the moments, the words, the emotions, the contact.

Each shares an understanding with me that is eternal.  I still call it an understanding, though I find it impossible to describe with clarity.  Before I knew anything about their personal history or particular situation, there was an essential part of me that recognized its reciprocal in them.  Before we shared our names we had already intuited our noumena.

It is the regrets I can’t help but dwell on first, how I ran out of time, out of money, out of heart, out of luck, out of imagination, out of help, out of forgiveness, out of sense, and these people passed out of my life.  I bargain, make excuses, rationalize.  On the good nights, I am able to accept; it is the difference between a haunting and a visitation.  Then I am able to celebrate them and what we were able to share.  The ties we discovered that existed before we did, and are unaltered by distance of space or time or emotion.  And I wonder when we might meet again, and in what way, and as whom.

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