Another change in this iteration of self-aggrandizement: I’m eschewing my solitude in the blog universe to cross-link and riff off of other bloggers’ posts I enjoy.

The first victim: Ms. Aubrey Sabala, who today dissects a past relationship and its tie to a specific place – Atlanta’s Ritz-Carlton hotel.

Her post struck a chord particularly because I had just finished reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, which touches a bit on ghosts, on how a place can be haunted by its past inhabitants.

That seems to me so frequently the case with relationships – a place, a song, even a smell can bring back a memory of a person, of times shared with that person, so very powerfully. I like Aubrey’s post a lot – especially the last paragraph – because I’m not sure we can ever fully banish those ghosts, completely exorcise them. The best we can do, I think, is acknowledge them, learn to live with them in the background, while focusing on the living, the here and now.

And, of course, if you happen to have an Atlanta Ritz-Carlton ghost that isn’t quite far enough gone yet to coexist with peacefully, I happen to know that particular hotel serves one hell of a dirty martini. A little liquor goes a long way in putting such hauntings in their place.