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From the Silence Overlap and collision – things in time and out of time; people in their right mind, people out of their minds: Halloween. The old people used to say that this is night the borderlines between the worlds melt like wax tears, the night when the past becomes present and comes back to haunt us, the time when that which we pretend is far away reveals itself as ever-present and due respect, if not placation.
It’s a night we usually smile off and ignore in these days of "more
important matters." Oh, what need have we of our ancestral idiocy?
But the ancestor’s idiocy is yet with us in many ways: the costumes, the
candy, the parties, the vague memory of a memory when the night was
actually dark and life was a delicate matter, long before we thought
we’d cheat old Kronos and Thanatos at dice for our lives. Years before
we dreamed we’d send Koltho, Lakhesis, and Atropos a false address when
they mailed us our winding sheet – before science made life a dream and
rendered our fears neuroses and psychoses for which there are pretty
pills and solemn professional rites.
And yet . . . the night has not been banished completely: there are
spots between the streetlights, alleyways immune to headlights and neon.
There are dreams, there are nightmares, and no amount of electricity or
science or psychopharmacology erases any of this. Somewhere down in us,
no matter how deep we sink the half-thought, we are eaten with the
knowledge that, for us all, the borderline between ourselves and The
Other will melt and does melt, and it overwhelms us with terror and awe.
We know that, one day, we, too, will be translated to another state, the
state of a memory becoming fast forgotten. And it causes us to recall
the memory of those who are now memories, forgotten, lost, suppressed.
Worlds within worlds, worlds beside worlds, worlds overlapping – the
borders dissolve: Halloween, the evening of the holy dead, of daimons,
angels, demons; the evening of our forgotten Fate.
Prepare a glass of wine and light the candles in the windows to guide
the souls home. Set a table for Death and welcome him; make terms with
him. Because, one night, he is coming to supper whether you like it or
not: He will come in the long black car and take you to a feast from
which you will not return – save for days like today when we light our
candles and wear the images of the denizens of other worlds. Save for
the days when old memories are welcome and we honor our fears, if not
placate them.
If there is a holiday in honor of depression, our Saturnine mood, it is
this one, the one when we welcome all that is dark and melancholy, we
rejoice in it, we do not pretend it is an illness to be fled from – it
is the one time we hold our darkness close and go through it to the
worlds beyond; and, if we live, we live to be richer, more imaginative
in our lives. And, if we don’t survive – well, we become the stuff of
imagination for another day, another’s life, another’s dreams and
nightmare visions.
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Richard Van Ingram
Copyright © 2007, All Rights
Reserved