Despite all that happens here on Her scorching surface, Mother Earth just keeps rolling along, unimpeded by our mental ideas about time and space, unbothered by the billionaire gnats flitting about her watery, verdant, rocky celestial body. Whatever "it" may be, "it" matters not to Terra Mater.
For the inhabitants of our solar system's shining blue jewel, frantically flipping the pages on our calendars, it means that we have again reached the end of October. Autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, the crops have been picked, the leaves are turning colors, the frost is on the grass. Finally...
Halloween.
It is the anti-Holiday, the subject of horror movies, a moonlit celebration of pagan trickery and artful deceit. Disguises. A night of calculated movement in the darkness. Some people would prefer that to be every night, with or without the candy.
Of course, it has been duded up for daylight nowadays. "Trunk or Treat" has largely supplanted the traditional way of doing things, conducted under the hovering gaze of parenthood in school and/or church parking lots - what good is that?
The shepherds of utopia have wrung the fun out of Halloween, compared to the way it used to be, there is no doubt about that. And progress only goes in one direction, so we're not about to go trudging back to the wicked old days.
Amidst the tragedy of the loss of my nephew Charlie, there is still a black light shining on some of the things we shared during his short lifetime. Halloween was one of Charlie's favorite holidays (right up there with his birthday and Christmas). I've written about it here before.
He was not a Treat-Trunker or whatever the hell you'd call that. He was old school, donning a damn good costume each year, coming home with enough sugar to feed the Army. The kid loved it. And I at least get to live with the knowledge that he got to experience Halloween in much the same way that I did.
Part of the thrill involved in such stealthy - almost professional - skulking was the fact that there really was danger out there. Some children, being bigger and lazier and less creative than their peers, opted for criminality instead of ingenuity. Going door-to-door in a methodical accumulation of goodies was simply not for them.
They'd let the others, their victims, do that hard work for them. At the right moment, they'd jump someone, ripping the heavy pillowcase from their frantic little hands, then go thudding off into the gloom.
Bullies. The very reason that clowns are scary.
Dedicated Trick-or-Treaters were mindful of that, and would either wear running shoes, or travel in packs. Or both. Bullies can travel in packs, too, after all.
One of the problems facing society today, another thing that our planet does not much notice, is that bullies run rampant among us, even as belabored adults. In response, the same people who come up with things like Trunk-or-Treat have tried to eliminate bullying from schools by decree. They tried to teach it out of humanity. But that won't work and should not be attempted.
Our parents taught us how to handle bullies. Ignore them at first, but if they escalate the confrontation, you had to know how to fight. And fight we did. Because bullies don't want to fight; they want to bully. And when you fight them, they generally go find somebody else to pick on.
We were not shielded from this harsh reality of the world because our elders knew that bullying does not end when childhood does, as if slated to do so on the calendar. They are all around us, among our bosses and co-workers and neighbors and fellow congregants.
They're on the Internet. They're in our government. They're on the other side of oceans that, like the trees on the street I grew up on, don't seem so big as they used to.
They are the real-life monsters and demons that we live with for all 365 days of the year. I believe in ghosts.
And I've known a few witches... Haven't I, Joyce?
pH 1o.28.21
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