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     Being curious toward, interested in, David made me feel like I’d bought into him, made a choice. By contrast, being obsessed by Sarah was a form of enslavement. “Obsess” comes from the Latin obsessus, past participle of obsidere, from ob- (against or in front of) + sedere (to sit) = “sit opposite to” (literal) = “to occupy, frequent, besiege” (figurative). When we say we are obsessed, we say we’re possessed, controlled, haunted by something or somebody else. We are beset, under siege. We can’t choose. I was obsessed with Sarah, meaning obsessed by her, deprived by her very existence of some quality I needed to feel complete and in charge of myself. If you’d asked Sarah, however, she would have said she’d done nothing to me. That’s how it is with the people by whom we’re obsessed. They’ve obsessed us, they’ve transitive-verbed us, but no one could be more surprised than they are.

     So who makes it happen—obsession? Unlike the things that I did blame her for, I didn’t blame Sarah for this. I didn’t blame either of us. Obsession is an accidental haunting, by a person not aware she’s a ghost. I knew Sarah was my ghost, but she’d forgotten I even existed.

                                                ––Susan Choi, Trust Exercise

HAUNTOLOGY

Also pronounced, "ontology." Pun thoroughly intended. The term was introduced for serious intellectual consideration by no less than Jacques Derrida 

"Phase Six" 

The Haunted Body

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What goes on in that space between us, that haunted space? This is the space between that is within. It only seems as if it were out there.

"Do you believe in ghosts?" My answer to that question is nuanced. I don't "believe" in ghosts. It's not a matter of belief but a certain knowledge that there are all sorts of ghosts and we are all haunted; our bodies are haunted.

A story. I had been teaching in a week-long residential workshop on Salt Spring Island, Canada, and had to travel from there to my friend Baeleay Callister's home on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia. I arrived at Baeleay's and just wanted a rest from the travel, to be fresh to teach with Baeleay the next day. She informed me that there was to be a meeting of a regular study group she had going. I was given permission to participate or not. I chose the latter. I was introduced to the two women who came to study Ortho-Bionomy and then excused myself. The next day Baeleay informed me that one of the women who had been planning to attend our class as well had changed her mind after briefly meeting me.

"That man has no aura," she explained to Baeleay. "I can't study with someone who has no aura. I don't even want to learn Ortho-Bionomy now. I will not be associated with an organization that allows anyone without an aura to teach." I am paraphrasing a paraphrase but that was the gist of it. 

I was relieved that she would not be attending. My apparent lack of aura functioned as a shield, a well-tuned immune system. What I know (and she did not) is that my "aura" has little to do with me. A person's aura is not something emanating from me but is projected onto one by others.

the absences that haunt our lives

Do I believe in ghosts? If you mean the spirit of a dead person imposing its malevolent will upon humanity–––highly unlikely but not entirely ruled out, probability being what it monstrously is.

A likely thing:

We are embedded in an emotional field. Strong impressions form an emotional "soliton," probably simple field dynamics, outside my range of expertise.

Nostalgia: a (creatied) longing for a past that never was (an America that never was); a mourning for a losr future.