Our Ghostly Self

2024.10.18

Good morning that wonderful way.

These next few weeks make Daylight Savings Time make sense.

Only early risers know.

"Took you long enough, Sunshine."

Not something most would say.

Unless Sunshine is a trendy nickname.

Like Ghos+.

Though, Ghos+ is more my function than a name.

Anytime you write something and it's read, that reader is hearing your ghost.

Your words live forever.

One of those Things That Stay.

Getting enough posts to now link others.

I've wrote everyday, whether a word or thousands, since my teens.

These past few months I've put my morning freewrites in one place, with some AI pics, to better share them.

Everyone loves a picture book.

There's a greater ghostly presence in words only, though.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but only if you use words.

Words are worth an infinite number of interpretations of each word.

There's no color other than the font choice of the text. Nothing to paint pictures in your mind other than your understanding of imagined things.

Like that feeling that something is in the room that you can't see, but part of you knows it's there, that's the experience of reading.

The amount the author trusts their voice determines how much of themselves they put into each letter, how much of their ghost is there with you as you read.

I go all in with every sentence. Something I've always done because of my love for sentences.

Something intangible, something in every room always felt that no one was talking about, I put it here. Put it into everything I write.

Somehow we know it.

Writer's call it finding your voice, which is really just trusting your voice and sharing it.

Mark Twain's laundry list versus mine, any interested reader could tell the difference though the words were the same.

There's a hidden dimension there. Right here. It comes from a place of trust in words. That each syllable can hold us better than any tangible thing ever could.

It's why criticism hurts writers so much. It's like someone is going after the unspeakable part we really feel is so important. That thing we call soul because we have no better word for it.

It's harder to see than other parts of our experience.

So much has depended on our ability to keep our bodies alive and well for most of our time here.

But as that becomes easier what is truly interesting about us, that 'soul' part we don't talk about, becomes clearer and clearer.

Plainly: It's the thing machines don't have. The one thing AI can never emulate.

The only way to express it is through our ghostly self. Our conveyance of this shared dream called Life.

Not deep thoughts, soon to be practicality itself.

"He's a futurist."

No, just planning ahead.

It's why I talk so much about writing, about sitting still to get to know you without all the laundry listing care for your body.

Your ghost is the only interesting thing about you. The piece that lives forever.

Really.

You ought to get to know your forever self before you die.

Really.

Not New Age stuff, true practicality.

The ghost of you is the only important thing about you.

It's what we love in another. It's our friend's and partner's value to us.

Not their bodies, the dream of them we hold.

Your thoughts of others when they're not physically in the room are, for you, them.

What will be your thoughts of you when you're no longer able to be in any room at all?

You don't get to leave yourself while you're alive. You're building that dream of you for Life to have and to hold.

You ought to stop and evaluate how you're doing once and awhile.

Take care, know yourself better, be yourself better, and have a better day.