This isn’t the original, but it’ll do.
Happy Halloween!
And whatever did happen to the Transylvania Twist?
There’s yet another bizarre unseasonable hurricane headed our way: Hurricane Sandy. (“Sandy!” snorted Apollonia when I showed her the NOAA chart the other day. “And look! There’s Hurricane Tony in the mid-Atlantic! Sandy and Tony! What is this, an Italian wedding?”)
Sandy is churning its way up the coast as we speak. Predictions show it veering inland somewhere near Long Island on Monday or Tuesday. It could bring Rhode Island high winds, and drenching rain, and even snow!
I am philosophical about this. I don’t much care. It’s a shame, though; Monday’s the office Halloween party, when staff members bring their kids to the office, and they trick-or-treat down the halls, and we give candy (or not). It’s a nice system; people who don’t like it just make a point of being absent, or putting a bowl of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups on their doorsteps. Some of us dress up. I usually just wear my skull necklace; it’s one of the few times during the year that I can wear something religious and get away with it.
I have come almost to enjoy this particular party. I like seeing the kids (even the kids who are just a wee bit too old for this) go from door to door; I get a kick out of it. Last year one of the athletics staff patrolled the hallway wearing a bear mascot outfit; I nearly died laughing when I saw him.
I would hate it if the hurricane deprived me of innocent pleasures like these.
So, Hurricane Sandy, go away. Come again some other day.
(And you Rhode Islanders: go out and buy bread and milk, and make it snappy!)
I don’t know about you, but my memories of childhood are not wonderful.
Take Halloween, for example. As I recall, I loved the idea of it: pumpkins, dressing up, getting free candy. When it came down to it, however, dressing up was a little embarrassing, not to mention uncomfortable (those 1960s-era plastic Fred Flintstone masks really didn’t allow you to breath very well). Also, going to strangers’ houses to ask for candy – in the dark, yet! – was sort of scary.
So I was pleased to hear this story from a coworker:
Her little boy, three years old, went out with his father to go trick-or-treating. They were gone for a suspiciously brief time; it turned out later that they’d gone to a total of five houses. But the little boy was deliriously happy. “I got so much candy!” he crowed.
And he dumped out his plastic bucket –
And he’d gotten maybe ten or twelve small pieces of candy.
But, to him, it was a windfall.
My friend is apparently very strict about her son's candy consumption, so he was very circumspect about eating anything from his bucket. “Can I have one piece now?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said. “But just one.”
He pulled out a fun-sized Kit Kat, unwrapped it, ate it, and went into a kind of satori. “Mamma,” he said, “what was that thing I just ate?”
“It’s called a Kit Kat,” she said.
“It is,” he said dreamily, “the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten. Can I have another one?”
“One’s enough for now,” she said. “Maybe if you’re good tomorrow, you can have another.”
“Okay,” he said. He took another Kit Kat out of his Halloween bucket and laid it on the table. “I’m going to put this right here,” he said. “And it’ll be right here waiting for me tomorrow.”
That’s the nicest story I’ve heard in a long time.
And now I am going to have a Kit Kat.
But just one.
I used to do traditional American for Halloween: pumpkins, scarecrows, etc.
Then, some years ago, a very sophisticated friend gave me a set of Dia de los Muertos figurines: skeleton nuns playing musical instruments. I didn’t take good care of them, and they lost limbs along the way; I don’t think any of them are whole anymore.
And then I found out that, if they were perfect, they would be very valuable.
Yeep!
Anyway, broken limbs and all, I started using them in a Day of the Dead display (see above photo). I supplement it with all kinds of things: photos of my dead relatives and friends, a business card from one of my dead bosses, the funeral notice from a friend who died last year, lots of little things that belonged to my parents while they were alive . . .
I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now. Every year there are more people to commemorate.
Every night, through most of October and right up to November 2, I try to light my candle every night, and actually muster up a thought or two for the people who have gone ahead of me on the road.
It makes the prospect seem less lonely, somehow.
Happy Day of the Dead.
Today, a poem. Those of you who are purely Anglophone can skip to the translation below, by A. S. Kline. It’s not perfect, but it’s far better than anything I could manage on the spur of the moment, and it rhymes, and it will give you an idea of the very lovely and sad and Halloweeny original.
(One thing in the last couplet: “avoines folles” are “wild oats,” which I am sure you know by sight at least, and which I have given you in the above image. They are a far more atmospheric background for our two ghosts than “wild herbs,” but Kline used “herbs” to rhyme with “words,” and I understand and sympathize and am glad I can read French, and that’s why translation is a crazy bitch.)
*
Dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacé
Deux formes ont tout à l'heure passé.
Leurs yeux sont morts et leurs lèvres sont molles,
Et l'on entend à peine leurs paroles.
Dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacé
Deux spectres ont évoqué le passé.
--Te souvient-il de notre extase ancienne ?
--Pourquoi voulez-vous donc qu'il m'en souvienne ?
--Ton coeur bat-il toujours à mon seul nom ?
Toujours vois tu mon âme en rêve? --Non.
--Ah! les beaux jours de bonheur indicible
Où nous joignions nos bouches! --C'est possible.
Qu'il était bleu, le ciel, et grand l'espoir !
--L'espoir a fui, vaincu, vers le ciel noir.
Tels ils marchaient dans les avoines folles,
Et la nuit seule entendit leurs paroles.
*
In the lonely old park’s frozen glass
Two dark shadows lately passed.
Their lips were slack, eyes were blurred,
The words they spoke scarcely heard.
In the lonely old park’s frozen glass
Two spectral forms invoked the past.
‘Do you recall our former ecstasies?’
‘Why would you have me rake up memories?’
‘Does your heart still beat at my name alone?’
‘Is it always my soul you see in dream?’ – ‘Ah, no’.
‘Oh the lovely days of unspeakable mystery,
When our mouths met!’ – ‘Ah yes, maybe.’
‘How blue it was, the sky, how high our hopes!’
‘Hope fled, conquered, along the dark slopes.’
So they walked there, among the wild herbs,
And the night alone listened to their words.
