Day 176 The Vampire Chronicles

I've been spending a lot of time in cemeteries this year. Ever since i went to this graveyard i have been thinking about the dead and taking photographs of their homes, the places where their spirits wander and sometimes live.

I've also been thinking about immortality. Have you read the book Interview With A Vampire? It is a novel by Anne Rice. I read this in 1986, 10 years after it was written. This book had a big influence on me. So much so that i read it twice.

It is a little complicated to explain why this story about a 200 year old depressed and lonely vampire struck a chord in my heart. It certainly is a bloody and violent tale so one would have to read beyond the obvious cruelty and gruesomeness to find the sense of humanity that tortures the soul of the main character Louis.

To be sure the fictional conceptualizations of the contradictions and complexities of human nature intrigue me. How could it not? I am a student of the human heart in my daily work as a therapist. But more than that i think about the impossible and inescapable predicament of human suffering and despair.

When i first read the book i was mesmerized by the state of immoratality as Louis desscribes it. He finds at last freedom from all the needs and hungers of the body. No pain, no need for rest or nourishment, no aging of the body. He describes the gift of a preternatural enhancement of his senses with reverence and passion. I think about this. What it might be like to be free of the body yet live. For me it is the most compelling aspect of Louis's story.

But his tortured soul, his morbid sense of existential despair are magnified in his eternal state of indestructibility. Unfortunately that seems not to change from one spiritual plane to the next... we suffer the sins of all humanity whether we live or die. That is the message i take from this. "Do good in the world for the sake of your everlasting soul." Perhaps the Catholic Priest of my childhood had a premonition of Louis's lived truth.

But let me not lose the points i wish to make with this post. My first point is to give warning: Stay away from vampires! They often wish to make new friends. It often is boring in eternity. Point number two: Our physical world is alive with spirits of all temperaments. They have their own stories to tell. I for one will continue to seek them out. The lessons of the dead are of equal value to those from the living.

I tend to seek out the spirits and fallen angels when i am alone in the dark and overrun with sadness or grief but i tell you they have light and redemption to offer as well.

What have you discovered on your own journeys into the the realm of the spirit world?