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Dec. 10th, 2007 04:22 pmToday I've been working on foodstuff (as I often seem to do right now), but I've also been given the most wonderful information about ghosts and other curious beings in Canberra. Karen Herkes picked me up and drove me places and told me much history of those places. I now have my bushranger ghost, a pre-European water spirit and I know The Truth about the ghosts at the National Film and Sound Archive.
In my little ad hoc collection for fictional purposes, I had found a couple of sightngs that Karen didn't know, which made me feel useful. Karen knows a great deal, however, and my ghost-ridden novel is far more likely to see light of day than it was this time yesterday. For one thing, the precise bushranger I want actually visited our district from time to time (I thought he was nearer to Sydney). What's more, he is so close to the the type of person I am dreaming of for that aspect of the book that everything becomes way tempting. Not that he is Canberra's bushranger ghost (our ghost is a less impressive figure, it seems), but I don't care - he's still cool.
I'm still not ready to write. You can tell this by my circumlocutious descriptions. Besides, most of my fiction brain is in my futuristic eighteenth century, where there are (alas) no ghosts.
I have to think this through and internalise it and make the stories I need into my own. There are some local ghosts, for instance, that are just so sad I won't put them in the book. There was one in particular that had me in tears. Maybe one day I'll tell her story, just because she deserves to be remembered and she was given such an awful end.
What struck me, though, was that Canberra's ghosts cluster. There are a whole heap of buildings of a certain age that have them, and some places that have older memories. Many have stories rather than personalities, but some are unforgettable. There is a ghost that tears up art that doesn't fit its sensibilities and another that sits in the cockpit of a plane, looking out at the museum by night. One of Canberra's roadside ghosts was caught by a camera when Canberra was burning up, a few years ago, and you can see his image - sharp and unforgettable - against a flaming backdrop.
In my little ad hoc collection for fictional purposes, I had found a couple of sightngs that Karen didn't know, which made me feel useful. Karen knows a great deal, however, and my ghost-ridden novel is far more likely to see light of day than it was this time yesterday. For one thing, the precise bushranger I want actually visited our district from time to time (I thought he was nearer to Sydney). What's more, he is so close to the the type of person I am dreaming of for that aspect of the book that everything becomes way tempting. Not that he is Canberra's bushranger ghost (our ghost is a less impressive figure, it seems), but I don't care - he's still cool.
I'm still not ready to write. You can tell this by my circumlocutious descriptions. Besides, most of my fiction brain is in my futuristic eighteenth century, where there are (alas) no ghosts.
I have to think this through and internalise it and make the stories I need into my own. There are some local ghosts, for instance, that are just so sad I won't put them in the book. There was one in particular that had me in tears. Maybe one day I'll tell her story, just because she deserves to be remembered and she was given such an awful end.
What struck me, though, was that Canberra's ghosts cluster. There are a whole heap of buildings of a certain age that have them, and some places that have older memories. Many have stories rather than personalities, but some are unforgettable. There is a ghost that tears up art that doesn't fit its sensibilities and another that sits in the cockpit of a plane, looking out at the museum by night. One of Canberra's roadside ghosts was caught by a camera when Canberra was burning up, a few years ago, and you can see his image - sharp and unforgettable - against a flaming backdrop.