Haunted House

Haunt is a very interesting word.

To be haunted is complex, a concept that can be interpreted in many ways.

A haunt can be a noun, like a favorite place to hang out. Hant or haint is a vernacular form when it’s another noun, a synonym of ghost.

Haunt as a verb is wobbly, going from very bad to seductive. If we are haunted by something or someone, it often gets sensual, and we begin to dream.

Why, then, do ghosts, haunted houses, and the like mostly provoke shudders? Do we think the norm is associated with death (ours)? What are we afraid of? Granted, the root this word comes from could be Old Swedish and might refer to being caught up by/in something we cannot fathom. It is into the abyss and off with our (rational) mind.n Always alongside haunt is unheimlich or das Umheinliche, the uncanny, perhaps dug up or rather defined by Freud, but don’t quote me on that.

We may simply be afraid of the unknown, what we can’t control through our senses, what must be a danger to us if we cannot articulate what it means.

You can probably tell I’ve done a considerable amount of research on this topic, plus I’ve read a lot of articles, plus my family since way back was so religious they were truly frightening, which gives me an advantage over a lot of people. However, I’d like to set that aside now to tell you about how and by what or whom I am haunted. This is a rational explanation and as such is not accompanied by any fear whatsoever; rather, it’s a kind of mini autobiography or memoir (which are not the same thing), and its only purpose is to provide a better understanding of a brain that has fed mostly on words (did you think I was going to say worms?) its whole life. This is the tale of the hunter and the haunting, or the haunt for the perfect hunt, or of loving ghosts. Any of those, and others.

Getting to the point: I am haunted by words, many of which or whom I met in books. Which I still meet in books. Which I’m starting to forget now because I can’t seem to cram any more in. That refers to cramming books into my house and words into my memory. In a couple or three or more languages. (It gets scary when everyone starts talking at once inside…) It’s not that words aren’t beautiful and necessary, but as I grow older, they require more muscle to jam them into the tight spaces they want to occupy. I’ve begun to fear them slightly, but am addicted.

This description of the crowding, however, isn’t the full picture and as such is not completely accurate. When words come to me in a book, that book takes up lodging in my brain. The space issue is real, and once I thought audiobooks would solve the problem of space in my heart and my house. It didn’t work, because I overlooked the fact that the words were heavier than that. They’re like cockroaches or clothes moths: you can’t get rid of them easily.

Yes, words are heavy, physically. They’re like bricks, one balanced atop others, flanked by many more. Just like I can’t forget the bricks my house where I grew up was made of, so I can’t recall living without the brick-shaped books. Inside me is a whole mansion of them, mostly invisible to others unless they poke at me a little and discover a few sharp corners. The good thing is that my internal books usually don’t hold me down; I remain fairly light on my feet. That’s not the problem. At what point do I cease being me and become a bookshelf or actors in a Shakespeare play or even a whole library? Do I give up and succumb to Jorge Luis Borges’ model of existing only or through books? Do I tell Emma Pedreira of Galicia that if she wrote a book about the books inside her, I could have written it too, which would make us (Emma and me) a bit like Borges’ Pierre Menard, author of the Quijote? Do I send an email to every scholar who has written a book on libraries, reading, lost and discovered books, technology as the assassin of the book, etc. telling them to stop, that I’m there with them, have read all they’ve written, committed it to memory? 

The danger, one of the dangers, of being haunted by bookwords is that at the point of no frontier, one becomes what one reads, like we are what we eat. We are the characters, the narrators, the pages. We live out our lives as Little Eva or Kat Scarpetta. We no longer know our towns better than the Nordic lands of Henning Mankell and Stieg Larrson. This is a tiny example of my world; if you don’t know where I am or who put me there, then you don’t know me. It’s not being arrogant: long ago I forgot where I was, exactly, guess you could say I lost the page, and now I’m Jo of the March sisters, Catalina de Erauso the Ensign Nun or Catherine of Brontë creation.

Do I live dangerously by having a headboard for my bed that is a bookshelf? Others might put creams, tissues, or reading glasses on the shelf, but I don’t, obviously. I already have a cat who will topple them onto me when she’s ready for breakfast, except it just feels like I’m having a normal dream. I fall asleep forgetting to put back the two books that are on the other side of the bed, but it’s not like “A Rose for Emily,” that weird story by Faulkner from 1930 in which spinster Emily sleeps with a rose atop the dent of a body. My books aren’t dents that signify an absence; they are real. 

I have the first book I ever owned, at about age one or less. Even bought more copies. Batted and their gleam dulled by age or carelessness, my collection of Little Golden Books is my treasure, along with the Bobbsey Twins series. You don’t need the entire list, but you might detect the glimmer in my eyes or the pleasurable shiver down my spine as I think of all Louisa May Alcott, including Long Fatal Love Chase, which only became known a century later, so risqué was it for a female writer. Add to Alcott’s book A.S. Byatt’s Possession, which I finished in Lisbon and opened page one immediately so I could start over. Santa, a novel. Maggie. Women tempted and tempting. I’ve been them all, at one time or another. 

If the thriller-mystery-crime section of a book list includes the theme of a writer or editor, I cannot resist. It’s why I love Anthony Horowitz and his witty metaliterary plays on words. He’s irresistible, let me tell you. I get in there, get all twisted up, then feel spit out at the end, still craving more. He has to keep writing or I’m going to take care of him like Kathy Bates took care of Paul Sheldon in Misery. Well, Kathy didn’t do it, her character did, but it could have been her because she’s perfectly cast for more than one King film. Fiction vs. life? You should know me well enough by know to realize I don’t. Care to draw the line between the two.

So there you have it: my life in a nutshell, or in a book. Inside me the brick wall keeps growing, more slowly now, but still expanding. I’ve put a condition in my will that I want to die with a book in my hands. And some paper, pretty ink, maybe my iPad. Otherwise, I might be afraid, just like I am since November 5, when fiction became much more real and the lies became true. (Well, they say fiction writers are liars, but I’d argue their purpose is more noble.) However, in case nobody reaches me in time, I want them to promise they’ll inter me with enough reading and writing material to last a lifetime.

Final reflection:

Because I’m not afraid of ghosts or haunted houses; I am one of the worst devourers of words I know, my innards are in…words. All the syllables, chapters, and sequels bumping up against one another in a race to define me. A lost cause, because I am like The Blob, consuming every letter possible, in any color, font, on any platform, real or virtual.

Does this make me a cannibal?