Dear Ghost,
Welcome to my body. Breathe through my skin, make kin with my unconscious and connect me to the great flow of beings that you belong to. The invisible world feels like an ocean, so much data, so much unresolved feeling all around us. Reality is made up of words and words make worlds. But our worlds today are falling apart because they are built on public fiction and empty promises, historical narratives that were written by the oppressor and future narratives to continue those oppressions. History is often structured by unanticipated reversals. The center disintegrates in the face of mountains, rivers and rains—bodies greater than our own. Bodies greater than the ones we have imagined. Your body, Ghost, in communion with mine and others around me, with our primogenitors and with the future carriers of our DNA.
I think about a “world community” with participants who are not only human but represent all forms of being. New kinds of storytelling are needed to convey the complexity of this “world community”; New Ghosts. The older ones must mutate. We must recognize that the act of respect is the same thing as the act of love. To love something is to give it a possibility to exist beyond one’s limited imagination.
I grew up fearful of you, Ghost, because you felt out of our control, out of reason, non–negotiable. But now, as time moves forward and the world starts to undo you, as the sea of data washes over all your invisibility and reveals your history, more than ever, I want to keep you with me and within me.
I know you are a story and I know the world is a story. There are aspects of the world that are uncontrollable. Let this anarchic energy pass through us and, as it does, become a part of us.
This is the way that I choose to love you, Ghost.
Korakrit Arunanondchai