10 12 pm est [ photos ]
When I lay in bed here I look up at a fan and admire
its geometry.
But when I am out of this room, ghosts glare at me from
their flat vistas. Living here with my aunt and uncle is my great aunt
Edna, who will be 94 shortly. I sneak into the bedroom to glance at her
wedding photo, trying to remind myself that she was once a real person,
not the caricature she has become. When her make-up is smeared and she
won't stop telling some story, I remind myself of the woman in that
photograph.
A most striking addition to the ghosts on the wall is a
new print of my uncle Leslie, who took his own life when I was very young.
The twin towers make a formidible past. This is a photograph of things no
longer with us.
