"What is it? They look like spirits, or haunts or something?
* * * * * * * * * *
"What is it?"
Much has been said through the years about Merle's reaction to this photograph. Daniel Sweetgrass and his friend, Joan Thompson, as well as even Thor Jessennvolk often discussed his reaction when they'd meet two weekends out of every year in a cozy cabin in Aspen. "It was like he was looking into another world, as if light's ability to showcase reality had been twisted to expose something dark and sinister beneath when seen through this miraculous middleman known as photography," said Joan as she sipped her cocoa around a raft of tiny marshmallows. "A glass darkly, one might suppose," murmured Thor sitting on the floor against the couch as Daniel, legs tucked up underneath him on the couch behind, casually stroked Thor's hair. Decades later, after Daniel and Joan both in the ground for some years, Thor would lament, "There were times when we felt like we were trying to see that world, experience the shock and intensity of Merle's first experience with a photographic negative. Like we knew the world wasn't truly as good as we all pretended it should be."
Sorry! I recently read Danielewski's Tom's Crossing and it must have infected my frontal lobe. Although writing just that small paragraph, I can see why Danielewski was so enamored with the narrative motif. I can't promise I won't do that again!
"spirits, or haunts"
The negative, in a way, captures the true essence of these suppose mad men locked inside the low-tier prison of a mental asylum. Wiping away individuality, the halls of the asylum become haunted by the figures shuffling about, screaming, terrified, bored, lost. Visitors, doctors, security, and staff lose the ability to distinguish one person over another. They are simply the spirits of those lost to reality. They have become the negatives of the "sane" people who remain outside the asylum's grounds.
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