So today I'm thinking about the projects I need to get done. having the Seattle Bandwidth site done (mostly) frees me to move on to other stuff. I'll be keeping a trip journal when i'm in Iowa, and if y'all want to see you're going to have to mail me. If you're on my notify list, you get in free, but everyone else is going to have to tell me they want in.
Sex, drugs, and rock and roll on the road. we'll see how it goes. I may clean it up and put it on the main site when i'm back, but since I don't know yet what it's going to have in it, I may not.
I'm not dressing up today, even though i thought long and hard about it. Mostly, it'll just be a pain in the butt, and I don't really feel like it. Just not in a festive mood this year, for some reason.
I was thinking this morning as I was dressing about Halloween, and why it's always been my favorite holiday. First and foremost was the possibility of transformation. I could, this one day out of the year, be a different person, dress as I wanted to dress, act as I wished I could act. i could even get my family (jokingly, of course, because who ever takes a ten-year-old seriously?) to call me by a new name. I always took the choice of a costume very seriously; it had to be something that I'd like to actually be, if only for a day. As a chid, I was bothered by the fact that my boundless imagination only worked on the inside of my skin; Halloween was the one day that i could get it tit to work on the outside of my skin as well. Every can see that you're different, if you're dressed up.
I think as a child i always wanted to be different than I was. Reality as i knew it was unbearable--hot, sweaty, itchy, boring. It was not envy--everyone else was miserable too, as far as I could tell. I wanted to be in a place where there wasn't pain, where I didn't have to talk to anyone, where there was nobody who had dominion over me.
It's telling that my fondest fantasies as a child were the ones in which everybody in the world died but me. I imagined my life among the ruins, all the things i would do when there wasn't anyone around to tell me i couldn't, to tell me things were too expensive, or to tell me that there were other things I should be doing. since I did not know loneliness, the absence of other people was a mere removal of barriers.
Then, as I got older, Halloween took on an element of being able to do what was normally forbidden--especially the ability to wear black, be out by myself after dark, and eat candy. The wearing black part was the most thrilling, as I recall, since I was forbidden to wear anything black at all from the time i was very young until i reached high school, when i started dressing all in black, much to the chagrin of my mother. Black "was not appropriate for little girls." However, I undisputably look good in black--it highlights the contrast between my skin, eyes, and hair.
I was a witch several Halloweens in a row. Black ALL OVER. It made me happy.
So now, with the power in my own hands to truly transform myself, the holiday has lost some of its appeal. Not all of it, though.
*****
I'm just plain tired. The sky outside is a lit-fog lavender as the unseen sun goes down, and the clouds are descending. it's been cold and drizzly all day.
I keep expecting to find a post from David, somewhere, making fun of someone or something that desperately needs it.
A toast, to absent friends. Happy new year, everyone.
