Shall I tell you a story?

Final question

12/8/2011

Here's a question. Start from the premise that places can contain a lingering essence of the past: ghosts, perhaps; memories that have floated loose from their owners; 'just a feeling' - everything that phrase means - without a single pinpointable source; souls that have not moved on; any number of things that impart a feel to a place. Spiritual, 'spooky' or intuitive. Consider also that places, over time, see successive generations of human habitation ('places' mostly meaning 'homes' here, though not exclusively). So much is brought, so much is left behind. All those hopes, fears touching the fabric like smoke from a hearth.
    And also present: an essence that is 'lingering' only in the sense that it's there as well as here; and 'from the past' only in the sense that it's from past, present, future and all the rest of it. Messengers who stay in place. Other souls also present. Stones, fires, chanting, the figures silhouetted against the flames; only gone if time is linear. The others.
    That's places. I want to ask about people. If a soul lives forever, but each human life is so short - this isn't the question, but answer it if you wish - what comes in, each time, from the outside, and what is left by past incarnations? I think I'm talking about a simplified karma, in that the imprint of previous lives is brought into this life. [And if so, the question might be <Who was I last time?> but is more usefully <Why am I me this time?>] But what I want to be talking about is the interaction of people and places.
    How much do we project ourselves onto our places; how much do we look at a feel, a sense, an intuition, and miss only the key detail that it's ours? Equally, how much of the spirit of a place is lingering humanity, how much our own projection, how much the fabric, and how much, as the temporary inheritors of this, today's people, could we seek to heal?
    Questions beget questions. Finally: what is the answer?

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Riddle. What are you? You're a conversation!