Dealing with the Undead

According to Wikipedia, "[u]ndead is a collective name for fictional, mythological, or legendary beings that are deceased yet behave as if alive." Sounds like my dissertation to me. And probably some of the other unfinished business clogging my thought processes, blocking my chi, and taking up storage space in my dwelling.   

The Wikipedia entry goes on to tell us that "[i]n some cases, the undead, especially skeletons and zombies, are under the control of a necromancer. In other cases, such as zombies as depicted in film, the undead existence is passed on like a curse or disease. . . .Ghosts are said to be kept in their undead state by willpower, either from a keen desire to remain with the living or from a wish to see something completed that they could not do during their lifetime. Revenants are a corporeal analog for ghosts in this manner, their independence setting them apart from the typically mindless skeleton or zombie. However note that, while ghosts are sometimes portrayed as benevolent or at least innocuous, the appearance of a revenant in folklore or fiction is almost universally horrific..." 

So now we are in the realm of necromancy.  Who knew?

More seriously, and more frightening, I find much of relevance in the above passage.  For example, "the undead existence is passed on like a curse or disease."  I have felt that my uncompleted dissertation has infected other projects, and even my whole work process.  And "[g]hosts [unfinished dissertations, etc.] are said to be kept in their undead state by willpower, either from a keen desire to remain with the living or from a wish to see something completed that they could not do during their lifetime."  And then there is the clearly pertinent verdict that such things are "almost universally horrific."

Okay.  So it's a bad thing that I continue to be haunted by this costly "failure to launch."  And to give space in my head, my study, my attic, several generations of hard drives, and my gut to what amounts to a stillbirth.

But what do I do about it?  How do we deal with such bothersome creatures?  Again, Wikipedia tells us of "[r]ituals propitiating the uneasy spirits of the dead [that] were a feature of ancient Greek religion (keres), ancient Roman religion (lemures), and Hinduism."  So a ritual, then.  And because I'm really more of a do-it-yourselfer when it comes to ritual, and because I don't have the kind of time required to mount an exhaustive search for an appropriate template through the annals of time, it would seem that it's on me to figure out how I might lay my  academic ghosts to rest.

A man I met long ago in poet circles shared his dissertation-zombie story with me.  After trying unsuccessfully to gift his mountains of data, notes and text to the state historical society--they wanted him to digitize his largesse before they would accept it!--he decided to build a bonfire and throw into it every scrap, every flake, every dissertational wisp, and to watch it burn.  His dreams and efforts literally going up in smoke.

I have kept this image all these years, for a reason perhaps.  But I am not ready.  The research I conducted, the stories I collected, and the impact they had on my life have their roots deeply planted in me.  I fear their removal, kind of like the surgical excision of a conjoined twin.  There is something of sacrilege about the idea of consigning this spector to the flames.

This may be the hardest thing for me to "put to bed" ultimately, harder even than totally obsessed mothering, which is another force to be reckoned with.  For today, I will try to keep moving and working, and accepting that I am not there yet.  A picture of Professor Quirrell in the first Harry Potter book, a purple garlic-scented turban covering his head, onto which the not-yet-completely-dead Voldemort had grafted his being, flashes before me--my dissertation as "[s]he who shall not be named."