Ghosts, Djinns, Genes, and Genies

Maddening. The gray days, the moisture, the heat. Frustration and hunger. I want to eat and drink everything in sight. It palliates the weather, I think. Maybe I’ve watched too many food shows on TV.

“Do you believe in sprits?” he asked me.

“Whiskey, mostly.”

“C’mon. I’m asking a serious questions.”

“No.”

“I don’t either, but lately I’ve been feeling things. Last night, I didn’t sleep well and when I rolled over, half-awake, it seemed as if something flew right by me. I could feel it. It made me shudder.”

“I’ve had nights like that. Alone in the dark, all sorts of wild things begin to take shape.”

“Then you do believe in spirits.”

“Nope.”

The human genome project found a gene for faith. Those who have it are better able to believe in things without evidence. I’m pretty certain I don’t have that. Once a fellow from Iran told me he knew a shaman who could take me into a cave where I could choose a djinn to enter and purify me. His brother had been a drug addict, and the priest took him there and he has been straight ever since.

“It wouldn’t work for me,” I told him.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t believe. I wouldn’t see any genies. You have to believe, I think.”

He considered that and allowed that it might be true.

I have dreams, of course, and I can allow my imagination to run wild. But that is all it is to me. Ghosts and djinns and genies.

On another occasion, I was selling books to a book buyer. He is a great fellow from India. I told him that I had been going to yoga and he got very excited. He told me about practicing yoga every morning first thing and explained his meditation and exercises. When he started getting a little mystical, I asked, “Gary, do you believe in God?”

“Sure man,” he said. “Not in one God, but in all the gods. God is everything and everything is god!”

BAM! A point of enlightenment. I liked that very much. God, it seemed to me, was a metaphor for all that happened, the sum total of all events. I thought of Ralph Waldo Emereson and others. I had a way of answering the question, “Do you believe in God?”

But ghosts and djinns and genies are another matter.

My friend was still thinking about the spirits that haunted his night.

“You’ve spent too many nights alone,” I offered. “When you have been used to being with someone, the night can get spooky. And now there is the weather, the changing air pressures that make the house crack and pop, then the coming of the thunder and the rain. Everything seems to be closing in. Summers are always bad for me. Maybe you should get out of town.”

“Yes, I think a vacation would do me good. But I don’t want to go somewhere alone.”

“Yes, I know what you mean.”