Unfinished Business... Ghosts

We're taking off for Italy this afternoon, and I don't want this unfinished post to be lost to the ages, so here it is in its current incarnation. I may come back to it later, I may not. Hey, if the great composers can leave unfinished masterworks, surely no one will miss a proper ending to my humble blog post. Enjoy...

I don't believe in ghosts. I think those shows where so-called ghost-hunters and experts in the paranormal sit around and scare each other with flashlights are retarded. For that reason I have been throroughly surprised by the impact that ghosts have had on me since our arrival in Europe.



I've visited 14th century Buddhist temples in Korea, Inca and pre-Inca ruins in Peru, and 1000-year-old Norse settlements in Canada, and each of these sites has offered a powerful testimony to the history they have witnessed. None of them, however, has been so vividly inhabited by figures so familiar as the ones I've encountered here. Since arriving in London I've felt the palimpsest presence of a host of characters whose histories are literally the stuff of legend.



At Westminster Abbey, surrounded on all sides by the tombs and monuments of a millenium's worth of heroes, I felt what must be pretty typical tourist-saturation. It's hard to be as impressed as you feel you should be looking at the tomb of Rudyard Kipling, when William Shakespeare is enshrined across the hall and Geoffrey Chaucer lies just beside. Nevertheless, I was truly awestruck when I laid eyes on St. Edward's Chair, which has been used in the coronation of every English monarch since Edward III in 1308* up to and including the current Queen. Aside from the fact that this 700-year-old artefact is still in use, and the voice of Jeremy Irons in my audioguide, what really imbued the Chair with a life of its own was the graffiti, itself 300 hears old, scratched all over the chair.



Just next door is the considerably smaller and younger Church of St. Margaret. We almost didn't go into this modest chapel in the shadow of the Abbey, but as we sat in our pew watching the sun stream through the stained glass, I could swear I saw the ghost of John Milton seeking God's guidance in the writing of Paradise Lost, or perhaps praying that his sight should last until he acheived his ambition of reading every book ever written. It is in moments like these that I start to believe in ghosts.


Standing on the spot where they executed William Wallace outside the Church of St. Bartholomew the Great, looking at the front door of General Wolfe's home in Bath, or ...


Sharing a glass of wine with the spirits of Hemmingway, Sartre and Picasso...


Gazing out the same windows at the views that inspired Rodin and Rilke...


Standing over the earthly remains of Chopin, Modigliani, and Moliere...

These places bear vivid imprints of individuals who accessed something greater than themselves, and by that virtue they hold a privileged position in our world.



*Queen Mary I is the only exception.