The ghosts of my footprints still reside in my past pathways. Every new step in the same place enlarges the footprint I place on the concrete jungle of my home, New York City. My mind’s eye opens like a camera aperture to capture moments printing out into the air like polaroids. The prints become floating milestones to step into the future and ponder upon for a mile or more. A younger me, a pioneer for memories, once walked the streets with no antecedent. Now, my environment is rife with experiences coloring my adventures.
High-frequency apparitions of love and joy often call out to me before the lower-frequency apparitions of hate or despair. The soul fingerprints of past dates with lovers long gone away are very loud. Many times I avoid a place with an old memory if I am with a new lover. Other times I go on purpose if I’m alone. A few times, I couldn’t avoid a place I took a past lover, and the memories stacked. Some memories may have been erased by stacking memories but I can’t remember. I give places with love a special significance in my heart even if I know it will be a one-time encounter.
My bedroom is a memory box of my most intimate relationships. At first, it was a place only for me and my hopes of getting stronger, shaking out some push-ups, and getting ready for college. In time, my room met my new girlfriend whose spirit signature began to transform the space. The spirit of her presence made my room unrecognizable compared to the times when I’d been alone. When we broke up, her spirit lingered but made the room dark. The same place of hope became filled with despair. Years later, my next girlfriend banished the spirit of the past— long ago faded into a remnant. The outline of her shadow still shines on my wall when the sun leaks in as warmly as it did on that day. Memories with friends chime in and trickle. My room displays all my memories in varying intensities. The furniture has moved around. The room has been emptied and filled again, but it still feels full of old times like an old shirt— the way a shirt fills with memories too until it becomes crumbly, torn, and disposed. The room’s memories are too numerous to have them all. They combine and ring discordantly with the definitive character of all the people and the selves who transpired within it; until a little cleansing with sage or florida water quiets the sirens.
It wasn’t my intention to have so many changes and relationships. I usually plan to not have more lovers once I have one, but up until now, my lovers have been temporary. The phases in love change my space, and my need to re-compartmentalize memories. Forgetting comes with an energetic importance for new energies to grow. Forgetting becomes easier where old memories don’t roam.
The way I avoid crossing memories over means I don’t repeat my dates. I think some people like to use certain dates over and over but if I did I wouldn’t stand a chance at love. It is important for me to have a moment be its own without the interjection of the last time I was there. It could after all be my last first date. Every date location starts fresh with the promise of everlasting memory. By the end of the night, the place is equipped with it.
On my own, I do repeat my steps, and more often visit places so I can remember. A surprisingly special day arrived when I longed for a past connection. It seemed to always be following me; desiring to be mourned. It deserved to be mourned. I went to Greenwood Cemetery to see a place where we had a date. On the day of the date, we walked over hills covered in pinecones and between plentiful trees teeming with birds to a part of the cemetery I liked to go to before I met her. The swaying grass still held the meditative energy produced by my past ritual dances in that spot. We set up our romantic picnic on a hill with a light breeze overlooking the grass and the lake beside it. Emotions that day were heavy.
Walking there, I could remember my emotions— like the feeling I get in dreams when my voice gets hushed to a whisper. Our time together was like a silent tragedy. A bright flame overly conscious of the expiration date. She loved me like she was secretly a spy who fell in love by accident. I loved her like she was my favorite spy.
After reflecting on the memory for a second, a heart balloon with the words “I love you” floated towards me. I knew it meant she thought of me too. I was elated to bond with the connection again. The balloon was a special confirmation of the powerful connection I have to places and the fact of ghostly ethereal connections in general. Now, the location holds the memory of a piece of proof for the power of the soul in space.
Spaces carry the weight of past occurrences. The shifting weights of apparitions in the ether is an environmental change that can go unnoticed. A place can keep the same structure and noticeably change in energy. It is easy for the unobservant participant to overlook the energetic changes in those situations. It’s perhaps heinous to ignore old energy when building new environments. The old energy often adopts a form of distress and patient spiritual warfare.
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts was built on top of the neighborhood called San Juan Hill. The old neighborhood was demolished without concern for all the residents who were Puerto Rican and African American. Before knowing, I lacked the awareness of the spiritual ether present from those times until one day a man on a dirt bike interrupted the everyday humdrum affairs by doing tricks in the plaza. His defiance towards the space was obvious communication from the spirit of the old place popping off at the unceremonious demolition of the legacy and the future of the vibrant historic community. Another day, a mural on the back of the building made me aware of the history. Now, the ginormous fountains in the plaza don’t flow with the same flair, the shows aren’t as momentous in the city’s beat as San Juan Hill would have been, and the lack of access plus classist judgment feels suffocating. I sit in the housing projects behind the Lincoln Center to have a smoke on a bench and mourn the old place I never knew.
Change in energy affects everything about an environment. However, the bond with what once was doesn’t always cause grief. Being with old moments brings happiness to find a former nascent pleasure again in feeling, companionship between a timeless mind finding a timeless space, or the acceptance of a new presence empowering the need to make a mark. When the ethereal weight is strongest, I can feel the souls asking to be unleashed from lingering rather than just lingering.
I have a place where I like to collect moments of myself lingering patiently as though in the eye of a storm. It is called Belvedere Castle in Central Park. Over time, the space adds new memories that mingle in ghost form. If I release the mental filter that processes moments so I can see them individually, the scene is a composite photo of me in different positions contemplating different moments.
One me hops over the fence while another me does the same thing but with two other people. Another me lingers on the edge of a rock holding a cigarette and enjoying a view of Turtle Pond while a fourth me gives a love interest a tour. A fifth me gives the same tour to a homegirl. I never got to try out the cliche of kissing at the castle but I did wonder. Maybe I’m saving it for later, or maybe I missed my chance with all the Central Park romances that never reached the castle.
Reminiscing in a place too long becomes chaotic. If I’m at the castle interacting with my ghosts, one of my ghosts will reminisce about another place and bring that place’s energy into the castle. Memories cross-breed into new memories, as a result, creating a puzzle of emotion and recollection. As the puzzle becomes too complex it stops being a puzzle and becomes an art piece of its own emanating an aura of lingering in contemplation and plutonic friendship. The space becomes worn because I enjoy it to its limit and I lose interest. I move on to another romantic place.
The castle would be a good candidate for a first date, but I fear the sensory overload. The location would become too heavy. It would tell on me. I’d begin to talk too much and lose the power of a new moment free from reminiscing. Looking for a fresh romantic place makes my city feel small. Manhattan is abundant with my memories already. I feel a need to find special places that apply only to a future “us”.
Does it even matter? It does.
The city will be filled with my ghosts one day. I will be unable to go anywhere without telling a story about a time in the past and remarking upon how it has changed.
The waterfall in the Bronx carries the time I dared to jump a fence to get closer to the rushing water for a photoshoot. Balancing on the hazards of flimsy rocks mixes with a memory of another time helping a friend— who talked me out of doing the risky jump during her film shoot. Those memories mix with the times I walked past there to visit my lover. Eventually, I bring in memories of other waterfalls and my companions from those occasions in Central Park or El Yunque Rainforest in Puerto Rico. Thinking of those moments could easily bring in the energy of thinking about all my ex-friends and lovers and make the space a hot spot for attracting negative energy. It’s almost like all waterfalls carry the risk of memory eruption for me.
I can’t avoid romantic waterfall dates tho. They are too special. I would avoid just certain waterfalls to be sure, because I’m running out of spaces much faster than lovers or others.
What if we kissed in the place where I manifested love in the past next to the ghost of me standing on the Brooklyn Bridge thinking about romantic kisses? Could we kiss after sneaking into the Andrew Freeman Mansion in the Bronx? The ghost of me left the window open. Maybe as long as I mix longing moments with realized ones those places become even more powerful— a full circle of occurrence.
I’m only 30 years old now, an age I would have thought ancient when I started out walking the miles and miles of streets as a teenager without adult supervision. I’ve already filled the city, my home, with enough ghosts for a blockbuster haunting, but I can feel the excitement of the new spaces soon to be introduced to my apparitions. The blank page energies of new places I attract are destined to become beautifully tattered pages with delicate worn-out words.
In between the beginning and the end, places grow with me. In some moments, I don’t only see my own ghosts but also the ghosts of other people’s memories. I see all the history: the people standing on corners; running to catch the bus; or chasing a dog who escaped their leash.
Will I come back and roam as a ghost, post-mortem, to have new memories again without a body— mixing in with reminiscent apparitions from times in flesh?
I don’t know. I just know the city’s spiritual form interacts with the changing landscape using a diverse range of emotions fueled by memory. Buildings, streets, and parks become new, renewed, and renamed, but the old ones are still there in the ether. The old still infuses the new with its response to what replaced it— be it defiance or acceptance. It can be felt lingering. Construction workers are not spirit workers who can exorcize the spirit of the past. Exorcism on that level is a massive project.
To try and erase the past with new constructions is a clumsy, sometimes anti-spiritual process. Brutality on some level is always associated. The Native American spirits massacred to make way for settler villages for men pillaging on behalf of foreign crowns and gods are still here. There was no caring ritual to transfer the earth to its thieves. The old factory slum life still lingers among the newly refurbished industrial condo luxury residencies. The walls of those antique places are often kept the same. Sweat from the old shop floor indelibly left its mark on a transplant’s new living room loft or the food court of a place like Industrial City in Brooklyn.
Grief fills the immediate aftermath of a beloved place being killed. Every day we kill more places due to the lesser ambitions of businessmen who are not concerned with love, art, culture, history, or spirit. Those people don’t build to impress or nourish. They build just to warehouse and sell. Our connection to the past still lingers despite changes, but we have more than a connection to the past. We also have a connection to our wholeness in an environment fragmented by the non-consensual destruction of community. The parts missed and beloved are within us and the ether waiting to resurrect. The environment abounds with the energies of assistance for those who act with love and connection to it. Changing environments are full of grief when the change is a death, but a change can also be an improvement like a deeper connection to nourishment. Nourishment tends to come with evolution, knowledge, and prayer. Environmental assistance is a kindred ethereal spirit who misses love flowing in the location combined with the activity of people taking responsibility energetically and physically for the environment. Environmental assistance from the ethereal beings is my medicine for solastalgia.
