Friday, November 1, 2013

All Done


Evening folks. Well the day has come and gone once again. I've taken down the haunt for the evening, and tomorrow I'll pack everything away again for another year.

Class of 2013
I was thinking back this evening to a summer afternoon when I was 8 or 9 years old, sitting at the drafting table in my father's studio. I was looking over a mask catalog, and calculating how many Halloweens I could have in my lifetime. 80, I thought, 80 is the average, probably somewhat less than that now, for my generation. 80 Halloweens. It seemed like such a meager number. I wonder how many Halloweens I have left now?

I was working out on a slip of paper what I would be for Halloween each year. Corpse, ghoul, alien, etcetera, trying to make it all fit.

Now, I don't know, sometimes I feel like I'm sleepwalking through that oh so ephemeral life time. The season comes, but I barely notice it, my senses are dulled to it. There is no time for it, or will to enjoy it properly. Every so often I get a snitch of the old season, in the taste of a candy bar on a crisp day, in the familiar cadence of a well loved cartoon. But these are but reminiscences. It seems I am always chasing nostalgia.

But am I forging new memories? Do I sincerely enjoy each of these precious new Halloweens? Do I cherish individual moments from them, as I did when it was all new to me, when the shape of life, and indeed this Halloween thing itself was still a mystery?

I don't know, I don't know.

6 comments:

  1. Such a lovely, bittersweet post.

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  2. Wow. You were really into planning when you were a kid! So did you manage to think up 80 different costumes? I think we're all trying to hold on to that Halloween magic from our childhood. Not that there aren't tons of ways to enjoy Halloween as an adult, it's just different. I think now it's more about providing that magic for others. :)

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    1. To be honest, 80 would have been a stretch. At that time I didn't really expect that I'd live past 15, and if I did I fully expected to run away from home and be living as some sort of drifter by that time.

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  3. I feel your pain. Halloween always comes too fast and I celebrate it too little to my taste. The two months, heck the two months and a half before are now a sort of Halloween festival leading to the day.

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  4. Reality Tunnels cool concept... another psychologist on reality and human perception... cool clip .... Thanks.... The Doctor

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