Well the final days are slipping by and are filled with lists and projects and re-dos and nudging. All to get it just right. Furiously working by day to test at night. The timing this year allows for a pre-weekend no doubt filled with parties and these are nice as they extend, broaden the holiday since the Big Night is still to come.
I am especially glad this year that the streets roundabout where I live are particularly festive this year, no less than 16 homes nearby have some sort of lighting or scape or even pumpkins adorning yards and porches. This is quite a rare circumstance and I wonder what it means, such surge in activity that I’ve not seen in many a season. Its reassuring and simply delightful to see. My excitement, anticipation, even consternation are on the rise in these coming up days and I will smile as I look outside my windows to those orange lights across the street, to the cobwebs draped across bushes in that yard down the corner, at pumpkins standing proud, orange and round dotting the landscape here and there as I think of the children, families that will soon use them to connect the dots as some primitive GPS for sourcing candy. Soon now, very soon.
Tag Archives: Mirth and Musings
Mirth and Musings Part 3
Went to my local pumpkin patch yesterday to procure pumpkins for the big day. Got four fine examples of pumpkin flesh. Just love it when I spy a pumpkin sitting out on someones porch or sill or fence post or driveway. All that potential of carving artistry just waiting on the knife. These fleeting expressions of Halloween glee come and go so quickly, just a day in the sun, a night under the stars and then gone to a fate that may include a prank or a slow degradation on the stoop or even a quick trip to the garbage. It’s like Halloween itself, there and gone so quickly – its the slow build up that we can savor, contemplating the all too brief interlude of “Malevolent Mirth”.
Mirth and Musings Part 2
I pause in the midst of my Hallowreads posts to assert how really beautiful I find all of the creepy, cooky, colorful, chilling or uncanny decor that goes up to create the mischievous mask of Halloween in yards and garages, on front porches and driveways. Much appreciation to you all. It’s just 20 days now and I feel the duality of wanting time to slow and quicken as my anticipation heightens and my need for more time increases. Those orange lights I see going up calm both. Christmas is nothing to it. I always feel that looking at those fine holiday displays of lights in December is like peering through shop windows, very fine and under glass, removed and distant. Whereas Halloween decorations are enjoyed up close, where we are invited right up to the doorways to immerse ourselves in the experience. Yay.
Mirth and Musings Part I
It seems to me that when those other holidays are mentioned, (you know the ones I mean) there is one word invariably in tow – tradition. It’s always tradition this, tradition that, where you go, what you do, listen to, watch on TV, the food, the folks, the fun has all been planned out years ago and we are servants to all that has come before. While this is all well and good and at times mind numbing, I can’t help but express happily here how little Halloween has to do with all of that.
The tradition seems to be to change everything – what we wear, the treats we share, the type of scare. These are questions that wait to be answered. It all changes yearly and we spend time and effort, thought and action to put it all together for friends and strangers alike. It is this, the constant change of the holiday, that makes it so desirous in its experience. The end of October is not far off and I find myself heady in anticipation, wondering what this years’ night will become. I see a neighborhood around me slowly waking to it – weekly it changes, subtle hints of what is coming…
