Haunted

This afternoon I finally realized something on a conscious level that I have sort of known for a very long time: Familiar places are haunted.

In particular, I entered my office at NYU today — something I do pretty much every day — and realized that every time I walk through that door, somewhere in the back of my mind I flash back to people I used to know.

These ghostly people are quite a diverse bunch, and the memories span many years. What they all have in common is that at some point they were in my office, and they made an impression on me.

Don’t get me wrong — I am not assaulted by these memories. Many of them are very subtle, just tendrils of memory, impressions of ideas and relationships, that come to mind when I look at a particular book on my shelf, or at some little gift given to me by a former student.

But other memories are very strong indeed, and can cause me to replay entire snatches of conversations in the back of my mind, the way you can suddenly realize that you’ve been hearing a song in your head for the last half hour.

One strange aspect to all this is that these are not memories of these people as they are, but as they were. The actual people may be long gone from my life — or even gone from this earth.

But their ghosts remain, flickering just at the edge of my view, as if waiting for me to notice them.

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