Ghost Guides

Room in the City #4 / 2020 / Mixed media collage on paper / Russell C. Smith

Ghost guides of my dreams, what kind of rainbow can we salvage from this storm? Ice storm, storm across luminous screens of interconnected TV minds, storms of today and tomorrow in their eyes. Once upon a time, we stood off to the side of Midtown, sideways from Times Square, reading manuals of ancient purity, extolling transformational joys blending with esoteric excitations. Stray dogs howled up at the moon during nights of heat thunder, synchronicity, and luminosity. We heard rumors of life-altering books and pamphlets, long-ago secreted away under the floorboards. Turned out to have been a 1947 copy of The New York Post yellowing between five layers of linoleum. Headlines screamed and Hell’s Kitchen dwellers dreamed. A cosmic editor and rearranger came into our lives, revising the narrative of who we’d meet and what would be stirred up. Rumor has it the dreamy fog did it, a three-legged dog led the way, and the dust storm was a willing accomplice. How’d we wind up in a timeless moment at just the right time? Guided by our interconnected hearts and word-loving minds. An interdimensional radio receiver played through the walls, transmitting live recordings of incandescent ghostly jazz bands, sounding like they were beamed in from a happening nightclub on the backside of Saturn.