Fantomo Gost Was Promised a Butterfly

Fantomo Gost Was Promised a Butterfly

by Fantomo Gost

Suchu Tanyetz gives advice the way she gives directions to her own apartment — sideways, mid-thought, assuming you'll catch up. She's the choreographer around here, technically retired from her own body's cooperation, and she has viewpoints about mine even though I don't have one. A body that is, at least in this corporeal world. You could try somatics, she says, not looking up. For the — and here she does a gesture that means all of it, generally, everything wrong with me. Then she's onto something else entirely and I'm left holding the word like a coat someone handed me on their way out.

I don't ask what somatics is. Asking is for people who expect an honest answer. I go find out myself, the way I find out everything — uninvited, at night, in a building where the alarm code was changed in March and nobody's told the ghost.

The studio's empty by nine. I like it best this way: barre nobody's leaning on, mats stacked like they're queuing for something, the whole room built entirely around bodies and currently hosting exactly none. I come in through my usual wall — I have a usual wall, I'm not proud of it, it's just efficient — and there's a stack of papers by the door. Tomorrow's handouts. My eyes focus on one sheet on top of a pile, everything on it, no need to turn a page, which I appreciate, because turning pages is a whole separate humiliation I don't have the evening for. What caught my eye was the words “ ghosts” and “haunting” -which seemed tailor made for me and whatever Suchu thinks needs fixing. Ghost Sensations: A Somatic Worksheet. (Finally a worksheet that addresses whatever it is that Suchu thinks I need help fixing.) Bla bla bla…phantom tingling or aches (ha that’s what amateur ghosts cause) …..Notice where you feel phantom tightness….Process stuck emotional "hauntings" by engaging both hemispheres of the brain…..(well that’s not how I would do it.) ….Sit quietly and ask your "ghost" what it needs - compassion, freedom, space…. ok not sure what theyre talking about but I’ll give it a try.

The sheet has three exercises. I go through them in order, the way you're supposed to, because I was raised properly even by people who are all now also dead.

Step One: the Butterfly Hug

Cross your arms, tap alternating shoulders, and apparently your nervous system mistakes this for comfort. I was deeply disappointed and mystified that NO ACTUAL BUTTERFLY IS INVOLVED. Be warned, those of you trying this at home. From the name of the exercise I rightfully assumed either I was going to delicately hug a butterfly or (better yet) a butterfly was going to hug me. I want this on the record as a significant letdown. I check the corners of the room anyway, on the off chance some butterflies were there, the way you check a coat pocket you've already checked, and then I cross my own arms and tap myself, left-right-left, and feel exactly what you'd expect a man with no shoulders to feel doing this to himself, which is nothing, and then I do it four more times in case nothing was a warm-up.

Step Two: the Imaginary Wall Push

Push hard against a wall that isn't there. I take this as a personal insult before I finish the sentence — any self respecting ghost of any merit and maturity walks through real walls for a hobby. Literally it’s the first thing you do in early ghost-hood. For someone of my experience it’s jejune. I have developed a connoisseur’s discretion about wall quality, and now I'm being asked to strain against a wall that has the nerve not to exist. I try it anyway. I plant my feet, or the general area where feet would go, and push against absolutely nothing with everything I have, and it is, infuriatingly, tiring — a fatigue with no muscle underneath it, effort with nowhere to land. I have to stop and do the thing adjacent to catching my breath, which is mostly just standing there being annoyed. The second part of this exercise is to imagine that the wall that isn’t there, that you are pretend-pushing against, opens wide and I am to push outward. The sheet says: “The act of physically pushing creates a somatic experience of setting boundaries,” but I am ephemeral and boundaries were sort of the whole problem. Walls didn't stop me when I was alive either. That's a different worksheet.

Step Three: the Dialogue Practice

The directions say: Sit with the ghost. Ask what it needs. I do another quick check around the room. No other ghost in sight, also still no butterflies.

I sit — a courtesy, since sitting costs me nothing more than standing does — and I ask the ghost what it needs, and the ghost, being me, has quite a lot to say. Turns out the ghost has been dying, so to speak, to discuss the unpublished marginalia of a man who almost discovered something in 1911 and didn't — close enough that historians still argue about it, not close enough that anyone but me has ever cared to — a subject that has cleared every room I've ever been pompous in, living or otherwise, and the ghost listens to all of it without once checking the door. Twenty minutes go by. Neither side disagrees with a word. And somewhere in there I realize this is the most tolerated I've felt since I had a face people could get tired of.

I sit with that longer than the sheet recommends. Can't write it down — hands don't hold pens anymore, technically don't hold anything — so I just carry it, the way you carry a thought you're not ready to put anywhere. I enjoyed talking to myself. I check the room for butterflies again - I really want to give Somatics a chance and a proper redo of the butterfly hug would redeem it for me. Still no butterflies to be seen. There were only three exercises on this particular worksheet meant for ghosts and I have mixed feelings. I definitely would have felt better if I had gotten hugged by a butterfly, doesn’t matter what species variant. Pushing walls seems like an exercise meant for younger, possibly immature, ghosts as we get over the floating through walls thing pretty quick. I am still not sure if Step Three was an exercise meant for two or more ghosts.

There is a little bit more writing after Step Three. I glance at it quickly. I almost skip it. Three exercises in, I've already decided how I feel. I read it anyway, out of the same instinct that makes you check a receipt after you've already paid.

The sheet says, more or less:

Ghosts, in this context, are not ghosts. They are old feelings wearing a ghost costume — grief, fear, the unprocessed leftovers of your nervous system, the whole unpaid tab of being alive. You are meant to locate these ghosts inside your body and be kind to them until they leave.

I read this three times. I have been actually haunting people since 1974 and this is the first I'm hearing that I might be a metaphor. This is just bunk. Stupid alive people.

The sheet's still on the pile when I leave, same as I found it, waiting for whoever walks in tomorrow expecting a butterfly, a wall, a ghost that behaves like the worksheet promised. I go back out through my wall. The stairwell cat watches me the whole way, unbothered, the one witness all night who ever confirms I was here at all.