Suburban Soliloquies #4

~The Lack of Ghosts~

During our nocturnal perambulations, my four-legged companion is consistent, always hitting his favourite marks. One particular route takes us past a dense patch of ivy and tall trees, disconcerting in that this small area does not fit in with the terrain. Levittown landscaping is generally manicured lawns with trees seldom very old. Here is a brief lapse in the incessant repetition of like homes, a narrow lot supporting a small, overgrown jungle. A determined Boris pulls at his leash for this particularly spot. This narrow area extends away from the curb, piercing half the width of the block, so that it is surrounded on three sides by the backyards of homes. Boris wades into the ivy and urinates. With the exception of the few families that border this strip of wilderness, very few other neighbours know this wooded patch of ivy to be a cemetery.

The adjacent homes are not allowed to use this property, are not even permitted to attend to its appearance. It is cared for by the township's municipal government, a benign disregard. The meaning of this ground is not betrayed by gravestones. What was left of them had been removed after Levittown's first generation of vandals broke them off or knocked them down. The remnants can still be sought only an inch beneath the soil. These are the old family graves of a farm that once occupied this ground. They date back to the time of our Revolutionary War and are now so terribly forgotten.

It is past the witching hour of this foggy night when Boris and I arrive to this station on our walk. The tracery of naked trees casts shadows in the very air. I notice that someone has dumped their trimmings on this unmarked graveyard, but the prospect of unsettling the permanent denizens residing underground does not alarm me. I have not yet been witness to a spectral being, and I can think of no more hopeful prospect than meeting with a ghost. I would be overjoyed with the evidence of afterlife. I can think of several friends, now deceased, whose company I would have continued enjoying if only they deigned to haunt me.

Boris does not find the same rewards in contemplating the dead and the change that is wrought by time. To maintain continuity with the past while forging a link with the future does not entail, for my dog, a conscious effort. His instinct will preserve the past and prepare for the future so long as he focuses on securing food and copulating. (Well, actually he won't be copulating, but I don't know what his several siblings are up to.) So I wonder, is my contemplation born of lost instincts, acting as replacement for their absence? Have we humans exceeded practical needs with surfeit contemplating?

I look at Boris and realize he benefits from human contemplation, for Boris is living comfortably into an old age with less stress and fewer parasites than his wild cousins. He shares the heated house and has food and water brought to him. His unconditional loving is rewarded with a return of affection and respect that he never would have received from members of the pack.

And then I wonder about this site remaining unmarked. I would have my neighbours know about the history their homes have erased, the Larue family of farmers, and before them the tribes of the Lenni Lenape. I think the occupants in most of these houses are in denial, with little thought of death, concern for history, or caretaking for the future. Levittown is meant to be timeless, floating uncontaminated and permanent through history. Actually, for many, history is detached myths and legends from somewhere else, like Ireland, Poland, or the pages of the Bible. The "new" land under the foundations of their houses does not contain their former lives, so they are only interested in sniffing out the latest news and keeping tabs on their possessions while eating and copulating at every opportunity. Levittown needs ghosts.