"No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks."
A blessedly cool morning, finally. I took my coffee and NYT out on the front porch, in sweatshirt and slippers.
I was wearing pajama bottoms, as well. That probably needed to be clarified, lest you and my neighbors get the wrong impression about how things roll here at Tara.
Meanwhile, the ghosts are at it again. I refer to them in the plural, because P and I are pretty sure the downstairs ghost isn't the specter that floats past in the master bedroom changing room at times. This one spends most of his time (and we think it's a "he") around the top of the stairs to the basement. I can't say either of us has had that glimpse of something moving in the corner of our eye, like up here. The downstairs ghost manifests in impish behavior, moving things around in a way that can't simply be one of us having a senior moment. Peg lost her car keys the other day; we later found them in the bathroom sink.
[Interestingly, my computer screen just flashed, went dark, then came back to life as if nothing happened. Wondering if he's annoyed about me documenting all this.]
Last Friday Peg thought she's packed a card to take up to the Cliff and put on a shelf, featuring a frog and an encouraging words about taking leaps of faith, dating back to the first days of us being a couple. When we arrived at Canandaigua Lake, however, the card was nowhere to be found.
When we returned here on Sunday, there it was, again in the bathroom sink downstairs.
Obviously, something or someone wants us to pay attention to that spot. But why?
All of this thoroughly creeps me out, I must admit. The cats were here all weekend by themselves. Did they watch a card float across the family room and land there in the sink? No wonder Dean's been so clingy since we returned.
[Five minutes lost, after my computer went into its weekly reboot so the firmware updates could load. That it always happens on Monday morning is a sign I'm getting lazy, or better at not working all the time, given that the reboot happens the first time one turns on the computer after 6 a.m. each Saturday].
Maybe I'm also feeling more anxious about this invisible roomie because of the book I've begun reading after an intriguing NYT book review, The Devil's Best Trick: How the Face of Evil Disappeared, by Randall Sullivan. The book thusfar shifts back and forth between the history of Satan from the Hebrew Bible through Augustine and Aquinas (that's as far as I've gotten so far), and modern tales of satanic human sacrifice among Texas high schoolers and the cult of Saint Death in Mexico. All pretty chilling stuff, whether one believes in sentient evil or simply humanity's almost unlimited capacity for cruelty and superstition.
Whatever's floating around here hiding Peg's car keys (maybe in some eternal battle with St. Anthony) and romantic cards from our past doesn't seem particularly malevolent, although it's certainly more of a trickster vibe than the upstairs boarder. I do wonder if it's the same presence that floats around down in the basement--that one I have seen pass like a shadow behind me when I was filling the water softener with salt or looking for a tool at the bench. I sense a certain grumpiness down there, which may be me projecting, or the consequence of spending all eternity in our damp, dark basement.
It's turned much grayer and gloomier outside, as a small line of showers approaches from up toward Watkins Glen. I'll wait until it's bright again before venturing down into the cellar to retrieve the laundry in the dryer.
Toss in a crabby judge, some liquids with a number in front of the word proof, and maybe a gangster or runaway priest disturbing the quiet of your sleepy neighborhood, and you’ve got the makings of a local novel.