Heat Ghosts

New Orleans mid-July?
It's 84 degrees at 6:30 in the mornin.
How'd people ever survive these summers in layers of petticoats, whalebones, and wool?
In hats and bonnets and 30-eye boots?
In dockworker muslin and loose-virtue satin?
I mean, at least their bloomers didn't fill the bend, makin easy peein,
allowin a little breathin.

Long bfore electric fans and air conditionin, fore summer ice, fore sno-balls were a glimmer in anybody's eye, those heavy, torrid ghosts started pilin up, started pushin their gossamer elbows into heavy draped corners, makin it so stuffy y'could hardly breathe. Not sure when their voices gained such body. Grew corpulent. Insistent. Not real sure when they figured out they were more 'ghost' than most ghosts.

They thick out here, too. Ain't just a few of 'em,
mutterin outta boredom or feelin sorry for themselves or even grumblin vengeance (though those kind are t'be found everwhere). Ghosts round here, most of em been watchin the livin so long it seems like they forget they're on th'other side. Chattin you up while you're tryin to mind y'own business down by the river at sunrise. Y'think maybe it's a coupla people behind j'yuh, talkin soft and slow, but then realize they answerin the thoughts inside y'own head.
Think maybe it's just people behind j'yuh.
And it is.
Sorta.
If y'look at it a certain kinda way.
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Heat used't piss me off when I was a kid, made me angry.
Angry!
Still does a lot of people, I guess.
I figured out a while ago idn't anybody to get mad at. Can't up and punch anybody and make y'self feel better, make the heat stop. Best to just start workin nights if y'can, stay outta the sun, stay outta groups of other hot bodies. Stay in the cool where the cool is. Stay outta them dead people's air. Most people think ghosts just mostly come out at night, but I dunno. I dunno that at all. I think mebbe, in the summer, mebbe those ghosts talkin more than uzhul. Mebbe that's why it feels like walkin int' somebody's mouth when y'go outside.
Mebbe.

Can't hardly hear the cathedrul bells in this weather, either.
Sound tiny.
Far away.
Like they tryin t'find y'underwater.
Or in a bubble.
Or across a Divide.
Like mebbe you the one slipped over.
Sometimes it's hard t'tell.
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I never been wunna those people knew f'sure I was always alive. Got labelled "bipolar" cause of a lotta things stemmin from that. Like when I know I'm alive, when I can feel all my fingers and toes and feel m'blood movin the right way, that's kind of a rush, feelin Alive down t'the cells and feelin each an evry one uh them cells, too. I got that certainty that I'm one place or thuther. They say that's the "manic." But when it's sure I'm dead, or should be, but my body's still here, stiff and forrin, I feel like a damn criminal. Feel like I done somethin bad and m'gonna get caught any second and gonna be in a worlda pain like my daddy never dreamed of showin me. Can't trust anybody when y'hidin from Death herself. Even if y'don't know why y' hidin, or whether y'care to keep at it.

Nice little label, though, innit?
7 letters and an image of both our planet poles, penguins and polar bears, for explainin away this weird doorway to somethin we suspect but don't understand.
A door our bones believe but our prayers say ain't so.
Well I say it's so,
even if I do say it kinda quiet 'cause I don't always like feelin like Cardinal Richelieu caught me eatin pussy while hostin the Heretic's Hen Party. It's funny how somethin so simple and true can get so many people mad. Like tellin em their dad gives shitty blow jobs.

Even if it really is true.

I figure science is about a thousand generations away from catchin up with any single part of our intrinsic knowledge, the stuff we know without knowin how we know it. I mean, there's the backwater reptilian stuff, the fight or flight thing that's kept us alive for long enough to kill most everything else on earth, but that ain't knowledge at all; it's instinct, despite what the tv's been tellin y'. I reckon there's lotsa people in lab coats wanna check into how we connect with ghosts and th like, but most people seem too scared to really let 'em have a go at it, includin other people in lab coats. Mebbe mostly those people.

Eitha way, those things the Real Smart People say don't exist?
Well, those things seem to like it just fine down here.
This town.
When the air gets all thick, when y'can't hear god's bells a block away, y'can hear a few more voices than there're people on the street. If y'gotch y'ears rilaxed. Pretty much all y'gotta do t'do that is just turn off that ninny in y'head that's got her fingers in her squeakyclean ears, glazey wide-eyed, scream-singin "jesus loves me this i knoooow!" or some other igneurnt, off-key shit like that. Sounds like a small thing, turnin her off. Like turnin down a volume knob or somethin. But that little bitch got some lungs and she gets freaked the fuck out if you try to lookit things she don't wanna see.

I'm just sayin.

Might be more trouble n y'think is all.
But, mercy! is it worth it.
I been led to honeybees when I'uz losin hope I'd see any ever again.
Been told to stay way or to leave where I was and'm still livin b'cause of it.
Been brought to pain I cud help in healin so's to ease another's sufferin.
Been shown wondrous things I couldn't ever share cause ain't nobody'd see it or undestand it if they did.
Had a hand put on my shouldr, stoppin m'mouth when somebody else needed t'talk bfore he went batshithomicidalcrazy and hurt more'n just my ears.
Been comfutted more often than I mebbe deserve, balm f'my heart when my body was ailin and torn.
Met long-dead grandmamas that seem now, in retr'spect, to've been leadin me to New Orleans, leadin me twhere I mebbe meet mself.

Yeh that heat's suh'm else.
Gets miragey out there and if y'din know bettuh, yd swear yjust heard yr own voice callin from cross the Square.
An mebbe y'did.
Or mebbe that granma ynever met akshally sound a lot like you.
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Those doors?
Those doors to th'other sides?
They got well-oiled hinges in this town.
This town built so high on dreams, the dreams become the city and the city become its dreams.
Sometimes I think we all ghosts.
You get down here to the Bottom, and we all down here.

We all down here.