Ghosts

A charming little thought just sprung into my head and so I sprung out of bed so that I might get your thoughts on it. I was thinking about ghosts and the spiritual world and all the different accounts we have of ghosts (some people hear footsteps and other times just doors open by themselves. Or other times people feel or see the ghost but don't hear it. And yet other times ghosts have picked things up while others have trouble touching tangible things). So my question is this. What if the traits of these ghosts are determined by the sins the these people committed in their life on earth? For example, say a man often stole things and now as a ghost he cant pick things up. Or another man would break into places (houses, stores, cars etc) and now as a ghost he cant move through walls. Is this too much like purgatory?

Camera

This is one of the papers I had to do for my rhetoric final and I apparently got pretty close to perfect on it so I thought I would share it with you. The topic was to write a description of our favorite material object....

Black and graceful, the small, sleek camera lounged on the old rickety desk lording its magnificence over the Empire of Room. What little sun was able to shine into that dim empire was soaked up by the one who, if the empire needed one, was the king. It sat there peacefully reviewing the wonderful beauty of the kingdom it had captured. But now what has happened? The lofty ruler was lifted from its comfortable spot in the remaining sunlight and was now being touched by caring and loving hands. These hands, causing him to wake from his lazy mode, called him to see the beauty of the far away land of Kitchen. He has been assured by his loyal subjects of the beauty and exquisite tastes he would fin there. They begged him as he left their comfortable little kingdom to bring back the loveliness that the people possessed there. Please with their faith in him, he set out with a mission to obtain the most exquisite thing he could find.
The camera now entered the bright and clean kingdom of the people ruled by the king names Sink. He could not take his eyes off the loveliness of the white counters. He blinked as the light began to be to much to bear. But now those caring hands set him to work taking pictures of the steaming eggs in the pan, the sizzling bacon on the skillet, tasting the warmth of fresh pancakes gently tanning in the skillet. Oh, how much bliss he would have to share with the people of his kingdom.
That night he returned to his rickety throng. Smiling with satisfaction, at the dog that will sit peacefully by his master's side. He now seemed change to his people. His round black lens looked smoother, shinier than it did before. His slim black body portrayed that of a new car. As he told of his stories, the listeners lounged in their respective places, slowly fading to sleep, being lulled by his musical voice. He himself soon began to fall into repose as the moon shone into the window. That black, slick, body, the round silver buttons, the smooth dark lens enclosing the clear glass was now reflecting the magnificent serenity of the moon as it sat in perfect stillness on that rickety old desk....


My teacher thought it was a bit awkward to right a love story to one's camera, but I was a bit rushed... it is a bit warm and fuzzy. Any comments?

"Laziness." said the little man "Its so wonderful."

As I stand in the kitchen gently humming to myself and stirring the corn that was about to come to a boil, suddenly with a strange squeak from the still air everything turns black. My first instinct is to turn around and expect to defend myself from the man in black who silently appeared behind, about to stick a knife in my back. 'Oh the power just went out', I announced to myself in the hopes that it might turn back on as my words spilled out.

Last night I won a whoppin' 3 dollars and 90 cents playing poker with my mom. And as I stole away with my winnings ( my mom would have easily warned me to not spend it all on one place), the questions began to flood my head. Shortly before we stopped playing the power came back on and my mom's first reaction was to rush back to the paper work she had been doing when the power so discourteously left us. I thought now, how odd it was that my mom and I would never play a game unless there was a lack of technology. Even stranger still, why had she not resorted to her normal reaction which would have been to light a candle and read a book? Further more, was there a sudden love for doing taxes that had possessed her at that moment to rush back to their open strangling arms? Certainly Not! I can assure you that my dear mother hates doing taxes as much as any American in their right mind would. What then stopped her from reading a book at that point? I didn't think I looked that desperate. Could it be simply that she just wanted a change? But if so why now? Why had it become a last resort for entertainment? Had she read a book by a candle I would have been just as pleased. Or had she lite a candle and gently, with a sly smile gently resting under her rosied cheeks, placed it on top of the piano and started playing, the pleasure would have been even more enhanced. But I ask you now, why oh why, do we take the opportunity to enjoy other people's company when there is nothing else to do? When there is no TV to entertain us, no flashing lights on the computer, no nothing except the still silence of burning candles and the asphyxiating smell of oil lamps, why is it only then that we turn to real conversation with our family?

My mom used to tell me that when TVs were just starting to get really big, mothers would leave their children at home to watch TV. This was the new and improved way of saving the money you might have spent on a babysitter. Now we think "what a nightmare!! What if I left my little Mikey at home to watch TV and he found the matches or a knife? or worse, what if he was kidnapped?!?" But the times really haven't changed that much since then. Now we hire babysitters but it is only the person who sits in front of it that has changed. We come home from work in the evenings and we tell ourselves that we have had a long, hard and sometimes hellish day and the only thing we deserve right now is a cold Bud light, our favorite TV show and eventually a nice big bowl of ice cream. Now there is nothing wrong with a bowl of ice cream, or watching your favorite TV show. The problem is that it happens all the time. The problem is that we have made a habit of this. We have crept into this hole wherein a voice is echoing, telling us that all we need is a comfortable spot, a cold beverage and the remote and we are all set to soak up all the useless information in the world.

'Sloth is their god. And Laziness is their Governor.' This is us - Americans. As Edmund Spense points out in his Faerie Queene, if we stay too long in the Palace of Pride (Sin) we simply dehumanize ourselves. So if we depend on technology, we become just like the TV or the Computer that we sit staring at so much.

"Laziness." said the little man "It so wonderful." But is it really?