Feigned Ghost

We recently moved into a new apartment on the cusp of Logan Square and Avondale. The building I live in has been around since 1907, rehabbed in 1999 with all of the original wood work. As a ghost enthusiast I was half hoping it would be haunted with friendly spirits. But didn't experience anything. Friends of mine at my house warming party tried to convince me they thought it was haunted. They kept hearing some creaking. But you know, old buildings shift and settle with movement. Easily debunked. 


Until lately... I was mighty hung over last sunday and my eyes were playing tricks on me as they were adjusting to the dark at bedtime. I thought I saw some vapor drift into the room and hover over me as I drifted quickly off to sleep. 


I woke up Monday morning and thought I heard an old lady's voice in my room but my girlfriend was in the shower. Maybe it was just a deflected murmur from the floor below. 


We've been seeing shadow cats. Movements of shadow playing, like "Shadow People", but of cats. We've been feeling an animal jump up on the bed but find that our cat is still licking itself in the other room. 


Coming back from putting my laundry in the dryer I assumed my girlfriend was still taking a nap in the bedroom. I had to use the lavatory so walked right up to it and opened the door. Heard a quick startled moan and saw a lady sitting there on the john... 


It was my girlfriend. She had got up from her nap. Yet my heart was still beating the fuck out of my chest as I had bee-Jesus out my barrel chested body hive. And so there really is no tangible phantom happening here. Just mind playing tricks. The grass is greener on the other side. Actually having a ghost would most likely be bothersome.

RPG of a Post World Order

Yesterday during my commute home from work I smelled smoke. I thought perhaps a building was on a fire and I look around yet saw no plumes. Must have been a barbeque. Down I went into the subterraneae of the subway and waited for Blue Line at Chicago. It arrived, for once there was room on a rush hour train and I got on the train. Then the smell of an electrical fire became an intense stimuli to everyone and the the conductor announced for everyone to get off of the train. A mass of people streamed out into the gathering smoke and up we went, unhappy, gasping, a hipster had a hissy fit, and we all split into different groups waiting at the nearest bus stop. I called my girlfriend and luckily caught her during her drive home and convinced her to pick me up. Whenever I read about Congress not getting along, and European debt problems, I feel a pseudo glee that the status quo of the money world is going to be disrupted and we will be living in a world similar to the post apocalyptic RPGs of our childhood. There's something exciting in that right? Something dangerous. Something fresh for all of us. Because then an IPO will not have any more power than an animal or a volcano. But then I think about my cat. Transporting him from tent town to tent town in the woods would certainly rouse panic beneath his soft fur. Desperate, hungry people might try to eat him. I'd try my best to protect him, to make him understand and to talk strategy with him. He might become curious of the outdoors and get lost, scratching his way out of the canvas sheathe at our camp. Then the fantasy becomes less a game and the dire concerns that come with fatherhood to any degree are churned. I still can't believe no one has found a real solution to the economy. Perhaps if we laid it all out, all of the criss-crossed problems of world community, into and RPG game and gave it to an enthusiastic fat kid to play all day we would come out the better, into the bright euphoria of a successful revolution.

Animal Anxiety

I was thinking about this idea over lunch - earlier this morning while getting dressed I accidentally bumped my box fan on my cat. He of course was fine, only a minor brushing of an object which glided off of his fluffy fur. But the look of terror in his eyes at the moment was intense, as of course cats are prone to over react to stimuli. I tend to feel anxiety here and there but I'm always able to talk myself down through cognitive recognition of the actual smallness of some stressors. But take for instance last week, some work was being done on our building and the noise was giving my cat extreme "big eyes." Unfortunately we are not able to properly communicate to him what is going on. I can only imagine the anxiety pumping through his blood - pure primal flight. So while thinking of this over lunch I imagined for minute what if someone injected me with a concoction of animal stress hormones. I wonder how different they are from cortisol and other adrenal gland secretions our human bodies create. I felt absolutely terrified for a moment, and then was able to talk myself down and dissolve the wickedness of my imagination, which seems to be most vivid when conjuring up the worst. Now to imagine blue skies and puffy clouds. That doesn't seem to be as sharp in my mind's eye. Wolves and sharks? For some reason sharper in mental resolution.