Spiritus ex Machina

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Spiritus ex Machina

“I’m Hen-er-y the eighth I am, Hen-er-y the Eighth I am, I am…”I can’t shake the song.

Not Evanescence with something dramatic and soul-rending, like “Bring Me to Life.”

Nope: Patrick Swayze from Ghost, for God’s sake, singing that horrid doggerel. It was funny in the movie.

It’s not funny, Patrick!

I’m empty. I’m full. I’m… different. I want desperately to scrub my face with my hands, as though I could scrape the song off with my nails. No face. No hands. No nails. What am I?

Like a children’s game. I could weep.Who weeps nowadays anyway? Not me. I can’t.Fuck.

I can move—I have moved—I travelled miles before I figured how to stop.

Stop. That’s what I want, really. I just want everything. To. Stop.

Including Patrick Swayze and the world’s worst rendition of a bottom-of-the-barrel song.

I’m spinning—flashing—between times. Forest, animals, people, buildings. Rain, hail, heat, none of which I feel, all of which are nevertheless there. Present. Not in the sense of gift. Although there is an oblique resemblance to the sort of tacky knick-knack the in-laws give you that you have to put up on the mantel like it’s an original van Gogh. No choice, no pleasure, a cacophony of resentment and bewilderment, with questions like “Why am I doing this?” and “Whose house is this, anyway?” It’s making my head spin—figuratively, obviously. In stopping the physical movement—is it physical movement?—the geographical movement, anyway, I have kickstarted some sort of chronological movement, which is ridiculous, it isn’t even possible, but here I am, shuddering my way through a surround-sound history lesson of here— dinosaurs might appear at any moment—and on top of it all is Patrick Swayze, with a shit-eating grin that might never have existed, shouting “’Enery!”

If I get to haunt somebody, I’m haunting him. Unless he’s dead. I don’t know. Is he dead? Can I haunt him anyway?

I’m bursting out in all directions. I can’t move left or right or up or down, I’m moving sideways. Through time. Except that it’s juddery and out of control, like an old film reel that keeps catching and skipping.

I guess I’ll stop. I have to stop. I can’t go on forever.Is this forever?Shit.Patrick Swayze. Really?

The concept of ghosts is ridiculous. What makes us think anything is bounded by linear time except the meat that holds us together? Even our brains skip and rollick in time like bloody otters having a snow day.

I have no meat. I’m vegetarian.

Oh God. Is this what I have come to? I’d laugh, except. No meat. No booze, either, which means I have zero excuse for terrible jokes.

What’s holding me together?Damn well better not be Patrick Swayze.“Second verse? Same as the first!”Stop.

It isn’t even my life flashing before my eyes. Not fair. Geologic time to the tune of “Henry the Eighth.” Who invented this?

Did I?