This morning I had a feeling that maybe ghosts from the Gold Rush times were hanging out on my back fence. I couldn’t see them, but that feeling in the early morning, before the sounds of leaf blowers and other power tools, when it is still quiet out.
My home back up to State Park property. The oak forest grows out of river rocks and maybe mine tailings. Gardening is a challenge because my entire yard is rocks covered in a thin layer of dirt. I make it work. A quick walk down to the river brings me to where there mining pushed millions of tons of dirt down the American River where it eventually showed up in the San Francisco Bay.
I think of artists like Charles Christian Nahl, William Keith, Will Jackson, Theodore Wores, Thomas Hill and others who walked along the streams and hills around here sketching and painting.
From the end of the road I should be able to hear Johnny Cash singing about Folsom Prison but his ghost isn’t here. Only the Gold Rush ghosts humming Ring of Fire and Folsom Prison Blues. They hum Metallica too. Whoever said Ghosts don’t learn new things was wrong. The Ghosts always keep up with the living. Despite the fact that they are trapped, they can still hear, and learn.
Ghosts can change and learn. So should the living. We should also remember, and share our memories so we don’t end up as ghosts before it is our time to go. We should also keep learning, and experiencing, and making new memories, and loving, and healing, so that we, again, do not end up as ghosts before our time.
That isn’t what I’d planned on musing about tonight. I was thinking about art. I was thinking about my garden. I was thinking about flowers, and painting, and my cats, and people I love.
I was thinking about the simple things, that aren’t that simple. Things I can’t change, and things I can.
Whatever happens, I will let the ghosts make their music. They can’t haunt me. I’m done with that, and besides, they aren’t those kind of ghosts.
Stay safe everyone.
~ Juliette aka Vampire Maman
Be fabulous in your own way.
Girl riding some sort of animal by Charles Christian Nahl
Vampire Maman 