RANGE: You will find the West Ghost anywhere you go looking to find yourself—from the organic taco stands of Chula Vista to Ken Kesey’s contented cattle ranch in Oregon. In search of cool, the W.G. occasionally drifts as far north as the goose-bumpy nude beaches of Vancouver. From the Rocky Mountain High Sierra clubs to the Hodaddy-clotted breakers off Catalina, in the waterbedrooms and extremely bored rooms, touching, relating, sharing, taking lunches and giving phone, the West Ghost does his thing, always here, always now. HABITS: The West Ghost lures his victims out to the earthquake perilled, partially reclaimed desert, with rumors of gold and legends of promiscuity. Once they are on his surf and turf, he implants in the sun-stroked minds of his prey the notion that a soak in a barrel of sweat with a coven of fellow Californians is a pleasant way to spend a couple of days. He enables one to enjoy listening to an entire game on the car radio while driving to and from the stadium. He inspires palimony disputes after the break-up of group marriages. He implants dozens of absolutely outrageous ideas for High- Concept situation comedies in the Perrier-addled noggins of his protegés. In return for feeding him five pounds of ocean temperature raw sea urchin, he’ll slip you the home phone number of a studio exec at Fox. He gives you a sunburn where the moon don’t shine. HISTORY: The West Ghost’s trendy—and ever-changing—appearance materializes out of a dense, deadly, drifting smog, composed of the exhaust of Okies’ model Ts, steam released by the 750-foot papier-mâche volcano in Disneyland, a mist of genelethal insecticides, smoke of a thousand movie moguls’ cigars and the incinerated dreams of ten thousand Midwest bottleblonds, vaporous exudations of beached whales mingled with the reek of hair oil, salad oil, sun-tan oil, snake oil, extremely crude oil, oiled palms, and oil of LA. SPOTTER’S TIPS: The West Ghost is invisible when viewed through sunglasses. Thus, it can be seen only by recent arrivals from the East, which explains the look of terror on their pale faces as they dodge from shadow to shadow down the palm-lined sun-blasted boulevards. The West Ghost is rilly, rilly, like, into his California life-style, y’know?
コーストに呼び集めている。
歴史 この妖精たちのナウくし
かも移ろいやすい成分は, じつ
は、ロスアンジェルスの吐きだ
す致死量に近いスモッグででき
ている。 その内分けは、工場の
煙突から出る煙, 車のマフラー
からの排気ガス, そして田舎出
のブロンド娘たちの夢が燃えつ
きた煙などである。 つまり科学
的な煙だけでは棲息に適さず,
そこになんらかの青春の燃えつ
きる煙が立ちのぼっていないと
棲息地 カリフォルニアの西海
岸ならどこにでもいる。とくに
日光浴のできる浜辺やサーフィ
ンに都合のいい波が立つところ
に住み、 人間たちを陽気にさせ、
人生でしなければならないつら
いことから目をそむけさせる役
割を果たしている。 “NOW ぃ”
といわれるものがあるところな
らどこにでも出没するのが特徴
で,そのほとんどはすぐに飽き
るという特性をそなえている。
習性 若者たちばかりでなく、
中年の男女にもとりついて年が
いもなくスケートボードやサ
ーフィンに熱中させたりするこ
とがある。 また大通りを歩く人
間たちから上着を奪い, 皮靴を
スニーカーにはき替えさせると
いういたずらもする。この妖精
にとりつかれた人間たちの一般
的な傾向としては, 太陽の直射
日光を浴びる時間が長くなると
いうことで,その結果, これら
の人間の典型的な症状として過
度の日焼けのために, しみ, そば
かすなどに悩むケースが多い。
主食はさんさんときらめく太
陽光線であるが, 副食としてサ
ン・オイルや日焼けどめクリー
ムなども好物としている。 また
この妖精たちは観光事業も熱心
で, 航空会社とタイアップして
たくさんの観光客をウエスト・ きる。
114
もちろん
繁殖しないのである。
青い海とまっ赤な太陽は絶対条
件である。 そのため最近では米
国以外でも,これらの条件さえ
満たされていればウェスト・ゴ
ーストたちが住みつくようにな
った。 しかしそれはあくまでも
擬似的な現象であって, 妖精の
世界では傍流扱いされているの
が実情である。 どこかの国みた
いに,ボードをかついで電車で
海に行くサーファーの姿など、
おもしろしくも悲しい妖精たち
のいたずらである。
私立探偵の情報 サングラスを
かけた米国の西海岸の連中には
このウェスト・ゴーストの姿は
見えないが,それ以外の太陽の
光が少ない場所からやってくる
人間ならだれでも見ることがで
Habitat
Anywhere on California’s west coast. Lives particularly on sun-bathing beaches and spots with good surfing waves, making people cheerful and helping them look away from the hard things in life they ought to be doing. Turns up wherever anything “now” exists — and almost everything it touches is characterized by the property of being immediately boring.
Behavior
Possesses not just young people but middle-aged men and women too, making them throw themselves into skateboarding and surfing with embarrassing age-inappropriate enthusiasm. Also plays the prank of stripping jackets off people walking down the street and swapping their leather shoes for sneakers. People possessed by this sprite generally tend to spend longer hours in direct sunlight — the typical resulting symptom being excessive tanning leading to age spots and freckles.
Its main diet is brilliant dazzling sunlight, with sun oil and sunscreen as side dishes. These sprites are also enthusiastic about tourism, teaming up with airlines to draw large numbers of visitors to the West Coast.
History
The sprites’ trendy yet fleeting composition is actually made from the near-lethal smog exhaled by Los Angeles. The breakdown: factory chimney smoke, car exhaust, and the smoke of country-girl blondes’ dreams burning out. In other words, scientific smoke alone is insufficient for habitation — unless some smoke of burning youth is also rising into the air, they cannot breed. Blue sea and blazing red sun are absolute requirements.
As a result, in recent years West Ghost sprites have started settling wherever these conditions are met, even outside America. But this remains an imitation phenomenon — in the fairy world these are considered tributaries of the mainstream. Surfers carrying their boards onto trains to get to the beach — like in a certain country — are an amusing yet melancholy prank of these derivative sprites.
Field Intelligence
West Coast Americans wearing sunglasses cannot see the West Ghost — but anyone coming from a place with less sunlight can see them perfectly well.
114
I feel luck to have grown up in that place at that time. I’ve never seen the ghost myself, only the lack of it having left my mellow homeland in the middle kingdom. I think Ken Kesey is the key here (pun intended). He wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1962 and Sometimes a Great Notion in 1964. Both are worth reading.
This too
https://www.historycolorado.org/story/articles-print/2021/06/28/one-flew-west