#51

Ha, it's Halloween night! I bet no one's going to read the post today. On the Eve which belongs to all the Hallows, people like to get shitfaced or sugarsick, maybe watch a scary movie or several. Reading something that is only sort of scary to people with sesquipedalophobia is not typically the favored activity.

No, the wild thing about Hallows 'Een is the fervor and ubiquity of fucking busting out, en masse--the closest Americans ever let themselves get to the Feast of Fools (apart from in, you know, politics), and everybody parties in some form or another. It's the costuming, the almost indescribable and truly frightening power of wearing and witnessing costumes and masks. 

For many people, Halloween is the definitive holiday, the true-self holiday, the holiday that pays off without needing anything put in that isn't fun and sexy and totemically empowering. To wear a mask, forget yourself, and revel--is there anything more human? Ha, only trying to censor and destroy the whole thing--which is, of course, that sort of person's idea of a party. This too, is very American. I love this blessed country and its incredible, sometimes mind-wrenching contradictions.

I'm sitting at home in my pajamas, of course. I hate it all. I like typing, alone, in regular clothes appropriate to the time and setting. Or in the nude, if it's summer and I'm alone. Someday I might be as crazy as Percy Aldridge Grainger and write naked in the middle of winter with the window open and who cares if anyone's watching, but for now, I wear pants most of the time. At least underwear.

Sociologically I think of Halloween as a plus (sublimation, the self-exploration provided by roleplay, the eruptions and gatherings of repurposed shamanism, people getting laid sometimes the one time all year), and anthropologically I find it fascinating, but I hate participating. I like high-quality chocolates and the sampling of new and untasted confections very much, but I have come to deplore mass-produced candies, and even as a kid my haul would last me weeks--what wouldn't go into the trash. My social life is made up of coworkers I rarely if ever see outside of work. I no longer drink. There's no little kids in my life right now. I hate wearing masks, because I am naturally the sort of person who disappears behind the mask and I do not like losing myself to a fetish. Dark roads lead to dark places; I don't gamble or do cocaine because of similar fears and feelings, and if a woman asks me to hit her, I don't do that either, no matter how hot she assures me it will make her. Same for anyone I might be fooling around with. 

So you see, from a personal perspective, I have nothing to gain these days, and believe that by and large, little good comes of the types of partying that typifies Halloween. I like ghost stories and horror a great deal, but I get my fill all the year round when the mood takes me; I don't really need a special day. It's like Christmas or my birthday; the point of these things is presents for a kid, but I have purchasing power, so I could give a fuck about getting some presents. I want my family around me, voices raised in song and laughter, and the occasion to feast. In this instance, I'm going to lie in bed and think about the veil between the worlds for a while.

What I am trying to get at, in the end, is that I hope people take care of each other out there. Don't lose sight of the people you love. Don't be heedless in the scrum to get intoxicated. Have fun, but remember who you are behind the mask.

Godspeed, friends, and if you have a moment, as it is indeed Samhain and All Saint's Eve and the beginning of Allhallowtide--memento mori, memento mortuis. Light a candle.


--JL