your way, ladies.” But if only the young saleswoman stood behind the counter, we’d swagger in and pore over the cases of glittering rings and necklaces and brooches. Kathleen favored diamonds and emeralds; I went for sapphires and peridots. We knew the name of every jewel in the store. If the saleswoman said anything to us, Kathleen had a bold reply: “You’d better be nice to us. We’re your future customers.”
No one ever asked us to leave the library. We went straight to the computers to surf the Internet. Kathleen coached me. She sat at one terminal, checking her email and searching for the perfect boots, while at another I moved from website to website, determined to learn about vampires.
Searching for “vampires and photographs” yielded more than eight million links to sites ranging from the fantastic to the obscene (which I couldn’t have accessed had I wanted to, thanks to the library’s built-in censorship system). However, I was able to visit a few websites that posted requests from vampires seeking other vampires for solace, instruction, or more arcane needs. A quick scan of the postings suggested many factions in the vampire community; some drank blood and others refrained (termed “wannabes” by one site, “psychic vampires” by another); some advertised themselves proudly as selfish and aggressive, while others sounded merely lonely, offering themselves as “donors.” But I found no mention of vampires in photographs.
As I continued my research, I occasionally glanced over at Kathleen, but she seemed intent on her own quest and didn’t meet my eyes.
The Wikipedia site offered a wealth of information. It talked about the origins of vampirism in folklore and fiction, and it linked to topics such as “Hematophagy” and “Pathology,” which I made a mental note to visit when I had more time. In terms of photographs, however, it offered only this: “Vampires typically cast no shadow and have no reflection. This mythical power is largely confined to European vampire myths and may be tied to folklore regarding the vampire’s lack of a soul. In modern fiction, this may extend to the idea that vampires cannot be photographed.”
I sat back in my chair and glanced toward Kathleen. But her terminal was vacant. Then I felt her breathing, right behind me, and when I glanced over my shoulder, her eyes, full of questions, met mine.
I carried those questions home to my lessons that day, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask my father any of them. How do you ask your own father about the state of his soul?
For that was one of the early definitions I’d found: upon becoming a vampire, a mortal sacrificed his soul.
Of course I wasn’t sure I believed in souls. I was an agnostic — I believed that there was no proof of God’s existence, yet I didn’t deny the possibility that he might exist. I had read selected chapters of the Bible, Quran, Kabbalah, Tao Te Ching, Bhagavad Gita, the writings of Lao-Tse — but I had read all of them as literature and philosophy, and my father and I discussed them as such. We had no ritualized spiritual practice — we worshipped ideas.
More specifically, we worshipped virtue, and the idea of the virtuous life. Plato talked of the importance of four virtues in particular: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. A disciplined education would allow one to learn virtue, according to Plato.
Every Friday, my father asked me to summarize the various lessons of the week: history, philosophy, mathematics, literature, the sciences, art. Then he would synthesize my summaries, finding patterns and parallels and symmetries that often dazzled me. My father had the ability to trace the historical evolution of belief systems, linking them to politics, arts, and sciences in a cogent and comprehensive manner that I’m afraid I took for granted then; my actual experiences of the world have shown me over time that, sadly, few minds are capable of such thinking and such
No one ever asked us to leave the library. We went straight to the computers to surf the Internet. Kathleen coached me. She sat at one terminal, checking her email and searching for the perfect boots, while at another I moved from website to website, determined to learn about vampires.
Searching for “vampires and photographs” yielded more than eight million links to sites ranging from the fantastic to the obscene (which I couldn’t have accessed had I wanted to, thanks to the library’s built-in censorship system). However, I was able to visit a few websites that posted requests from vampires seeking other vampires for solace, instruction, or more arcane needs. A quick scan of the postings suggested many factions in the vampire community; some drank blood and others refrained (termed “wannabes” by one site, “psychic vampires” by another); some advertised themselves proudly as selfish and aggressive, while others sounded merely lonely, offering themselves as “donors.” But I found no mention of vampires in photographs.
As I continued my research, I occasionally glanced over at Kathleen, but she seemed intent on her own quest and didn’t meet my eyes.
The Wikipedia site offered a wealth of information. It talked about the origins of vampirism in folklore and fiction, and it linked to topics such as “Hematophagy” and “Pathology,” which I made a mental note to visit when I had more time. In terms of photographs, however, it offered only this: “Vampires typically cast no shadow and have no reflection. This mythical power is largely confined to European vampire myths and may be tied to folklore regarding the vampire’s lack of a soul. In modern fiction, this may extend to the idea that vampires cannot be photographed.”
I sat back in my chair and glanced toward Kathleen. But her terminal was vacant. Then I felt her breathing, right behind me, and when I glanced over my shoulder, her eyes, full of questions, met mine.
I carried those questions home to my lessons that day, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask my father any of them. How do you ask your own father about the state of his soul?
For that was one of the early definitions I’d found: upon becoming a vampire, a mortal sacrificed his soul.
Of course I wasn’t sure I believed in souls. I was an agnostic — I believed that there was no proof of God’s existence, yet I didn’t deny the possibility that he might exist. I had read selected chapters of the Bible, Quran, Kabbalah, Tao Te Ching, Bhagavad Gita, the writings of Lao-Tse — but I had read all of them as literature and philosophy, and my father and I discussed them as such. We had no ritualized spiritual practice — we worshipped ideas.
More specifically, we worshipped virtue, and the idea of the virtuous life. Plato talked of the importance of four virtues in particular: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. A disciplined education would allow one to learn virtue, according to Plato.
Every Friday, my father asked me to summarize the various lessons of the week: history, philosophy, mathematics, literature, the sciences, art. Then he would synthesize my summaries, finding patterns and parallels and symmetries that often dazzled me. My father had the ability to trace the historical evolution of belief systems, linking them to politics, arts, and sciences in a cogent and comprehensive manner that I’m afraid I took for granted then; my actual experiences of the world have shown me over time that, sadly, few minds are capable of such thinking and such
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