When I took my dog to a behavior correction class, an instructor told me that dogs think about only two things: what will give them a chance to eat food and whether they are safe or not.
The house in the story, “Haunted House” keeps whispering, “safe, safe, safe,” as if it’s a dog assuring itself from panic. Or that is the assurance any mammal would want, but human beings may call it “anxiety of beings”.
The ghost couple is walking around the house looking for a treasure. “Here we left it,” she said. He added, “Oh, but here too!”
This couple is a discourse after an author died. The ghost could be the old discourse which believed it had a meaning in itself like a divine message with a mark which in waiting we find in the woods.
The story shows the separation between the ghost couple and the resident of the house who knows that they are there.
“What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?”
Whose question is this? The Couple’s? Or the resident’s? This is the kind of question one may have when she/he starts reading a book (discourse.)
In older days, discourse tried to work hard to show its meaning, “treasure” to readers. The discourse may lose it from time to time like this couple. They may find it again in the drawing-room, like this couple.
My hands are empty.
This sentence is also repeated.
My hands are empty.
This is the author (or reader) reading this story from the outside of the story.
My hands are empty.
So we expect that we find a treasure in a book.
Safe, safe, safe…
The house keeps whispering as if the work keeps whispering about the safety of the treasure. In order for the treasure to be kept safe, the discourse has to go through multiple canons.
Death was the glass.
Something transparent offered the mortality. Or it could be the rebirth.
In the end, the couple finds that the treasure is in themselves.
“Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.”
They have found it as if the discourse finds that the text itself (not the author) is the treasure.
The outside eye, “me” is watching it to give birth to another discourse.
