They tell me that the past and the future are mere illusions—this is what I am told by the great teachers of wisdom and spirit. I am told that the only thing that we really have is the present moment. The here and now. Yet, the ghosts continue to visit me at the most inopportune times. They are the swirling winds of my past, the floating ghosts of this life that I know.

I suppose they come because I am fascinated by them. I stare at the old photos in my grandmother's tattered albums of black paper. They stare back. Frozen in gesture but fading into nothingness, they stare back at me with the silly grins of old snapshots. They are linked to me by microscopic memories and strands of DNA. I can still hear some of them, their voices still rattling around in my brain. And they seem to be eager to tell me their stories.

As I grow older, the past seems to become a form of collective energy. It is harder to separate my own past, and my own ghosts, from the past of others. Lately, it seems that the all ghosts are blending together. I am therefore drawn to places that seem haunted. I search out places that vibrate with the lost echoes of old souls. I cannot help myself. I stare at old photos, old paintings. I look up at crumbling sculpture and the stone faces of the some ancient story.

Old stories swim in the deep recesses of my brain. I revisit my grandmother's albums and dig through a few shoe boxes of snapshots. I am looking for something. I am looking for a connection. I am looking for context. The present moment be damned, I am looking for old ghosts.