“Of course.”
“So when did this law start? Has it always existed?”
John is frowning, wondering what I am getting at.
“What I’m driving at”, I say, “is the notion that before the beginning of the earth, before the sun and the stars were formed, before the primal generation of anything, the law of gravity existed.”
“Sure.”
“Sitting there, having no mass of its own, no energy of its own, not in anyone’s mind because there wasn’t anyone, not in space because there was no space either, not anywhere… this law of gravity still existed?”
Now John seems not so sure.
“If that law of gravity existed”, I say, “I honestly don’t know what a thing has to do to be nonexistent. It seems to me that law of gravity has passed every test of nonexistence there is. You cannot think of a single attribute of nonexistence that that law of gravity didn’t have. Or a single scientific attribute of existence it did have. And yet it is still ‘common sense’ to believe that it existed.”
John says, “I guess I’d have to think about it.”
“Well, I predict that if you think about it long enough you will find yourself going round and round and round and round until you finally reach only one possible, rational, intelligent conclusion. The law of gravity and gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton. No other conclusion makes sense.”
“And what that means”, I say before he can interrupt, “and what that means is that that law of gravity exists nowhere except in people’s heads! It’s a ghost! We are all of us very arrogant and conceited about running down other people’s ghosts but just as ignorant and barbaric and superstitious about our own.”
“Why does everybody believe in the law of gravity then?”
“Mass hypnosis. In a very orthodox form known as ‘education.’”
“You mean the teacher is hypnotizing the kids into believing the law of gravity?”
“Sure.”
“That’s absurd.”
“You’ve heard of the importance of eye contact in the classroom? Every educationist emphasizes it. No educationist explains it.”
John shakes his head and pours me another drink. He puts his hand over his mouth and in a mock aside says to Sylvia, “You know, most of the time he seems like such a normal guy.”
I counter, “That’s the first normal thing I’ve said in weeks. The rest of the time I’m feigning twentieth- century lunacy just like you are. So as not to draw attention to myself.”
“But I’ll repeat it for you”, I say. “We believe the disembodied words of Sir Isaac Newton were sitting in the middle of nowhere billions of years before he was born and that magically he discovered these words. They were always there, even when they applied to nothing. Gradually the world came into being and then they applied to it. In fact, those words themselves were what formed the world. That, John, is ridiculous.”
“The problem, the contradiction the scientists are stuck with, is that of mind. Mind has no matter or energy but they can’t escape its predominance over everything they do. Logic exists in the mind. Numbers exist only in the mind. I don’t get upset when scientists say that ghosts exist in the mind. It’s that only that gets me. Science is only in your mind too, it’s just that that doesn’t make it bad. Or ghosts either.”
They are just looking at me so I continue: “Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Laws of logic, of mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts. The whole blessed thing is a human invention, including the idea that it isn’t a human invention. The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. It’s all a ghost, and in antiquity was so recognized as a ghost, the whole blessed world we live in. It’s run by ghosts. We see what we see because these ghosts show it to us, ghosts of Moses and Christ and the Buddha, and Plato, and Descartes, and Rousseau and Jefferson and Lincoln, on and on and on. Isaac Newton is a very good ghost. One of the best. Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past. Ghosts and more ghosts. Ghosts trying to find their place among the living.”
John looks too much in thought to speak. But Sylvia is excited. “Where do you get all these ideas?” she asks.
I am about to answer them but then do not. I have a feeling of having already pushed it to the limit, maybe beyond, and it is time to drop it.
After a while John says, “It’ll be good to see the mountains again.”
“Yes, it will”, I agree. “one last drink to that!”
We finish it and are off to our rooms.
I see that Chris brushes his teeth, and let him get by with a promise that he’ll shower in the morning. I pull seniority and take the bed by the window. After the lights are out he says, “Now, tell me a ghost story.”
“I just did, out there.”
“I mean a real ghost story.”
“That was the realest ghost story you’ll ever hear.”
“You know what I mean. The other kind.”
I try to think of some conventional ones. “I used to know so many of them when I was a kid, Chris, but they’re all forgotten”, I say. “It’s time to go to sleep. We’ve all got to get up early tomorrow.”
Except for the wind through the screens of the motel window it is quiet. The thought of all that wind sweeping toward us across the open fields of the prairie is a tranquil one and I feel lulled by it.
The wind rises and then falls, then rises and sighs, and falls again — from so many miles away.
“Did you ever know a ghost?” Chris asks.
I am half asleep. “Chris”, I say, “I knew a fellow once who spent all his whole life doing nothing but hunting for a ghost, and it was just a waste of time. So go to sleep.”
I realize my mistake too late.
“Did he find him?”
“Yes, he found him, Chris.”
I keep wishing Chris would just listen to the wind and not ask questions.
“What did he do then?”
“He thrashed him good.”
“Then what?”
“Then he became a ghost himself.” Somehow I had the thought this was going to put Chris to sleep, but it’s not and it’s just waking me up.
“What is his name?”
“No one you know.”
“But what is it?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Well, what is it anyway?”
“His name, Chris, since it doesn’t matter, is Ph?drus. It’s not a name you know.”
“Did you see him on the motorcycle in the storm?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Sylvia said she thought you saw a ghost.”
“That’s just an expression.”
“Dad?”
“This had better be the last question, Chris, or I’m going to become angry.”
“I was just going to say you sure don’t talk like anyone else.”
“Yes, Chris, I know that”, I say. “It’s a problem. Now go to sleep.”
“Good night, Dad.”
“Good night.”
A half hour later he is breathing sleepfully, and the wind is still strong as ever and I am wide-awake. There, out the window in the dark… this cold wind crossing the road into the trees, the leaves shimmering flecks of moonlight… there is no question about it, Ph?drus saw all of this. What he was doing here I have no idea. Why he came this way I will probably never know. But he has been here, steered us onto this strange road, has been with us all along. There is no escape.
I wish I could say that I don’t know why he is here, but I’m afraid I must now confess that I do. The ideas,
