My life has been absurdly busy lately. I've given enough attention to my day job that I've been tagged for a possible promotion (which I'm not sure I want), and I've been driving myself to write at night. Add that to regular workouts at the gym, home maintenance, cooking and cleaning, and you have a recipe for burnout.
So I decided to take a break (from writing) for a few days to regroup. I have really enjoyed the homework topics of late, and I hope to have the time to do a few more soon (and translate them into Español, for practice).
So: What are my Halloween traditions? I only have one, now.
Some years ago during my second year of college, I met a unique individual who became one of my best friends. I'll refer to him by his nom de plume, Thurl Tan Collins.
Thurl was born into a wealthy family, and he always felt trapped by that fact, simply because his parents used his allowance and his future inheritance as a means to control him. When he went to college, he wanted to become a mortician, but his family had him change his major to English. I soon found that he had an irresistible attraction to the macabre. Thurl collected horror movies, books, posters, memorabilia, etc. His heroine was Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (which I found curious, since he was gay). He also enjoyed writing his own stories, but he never sought to be published. I remember one in particular: it was called "My 30 Greats Aunt Electra," which was a racy, overtly sexual, re-telling of the tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - think "Dirty Snow and the Seven, tall, posing-strap clad professional wrestlers." The tale was both humorous and entertaining - but not pornographic, if you can believe that.
To make a long blog short (too late), visiting my friend was like visiting the Addams family. We liked to throw Halloween parties which we planned with great detail, and we would occasionally play an old school role-playing game called Call of Cthulhu made by Chaosium. I have over 10 years of weird, fond memories, including taking a tape recorder along on a walk through a graveyard on an October night.
However, 10 years ago, I received a letter from one of Thurl's sisters telling me that he died in his sleep. He was only 39. I was not invited to the funeral, as I was not an accepted friend of the family, and I think they believed he took up smoking after meeting me (probably true). I was affected enough by his passing and not be given the opportunity to be present at his funeral that I waited six months to reply to the letter. I wrote it during the witching hour on Halloween and emphasized every mystical aspect of that in my respectful, yet irreverent response to his fundamentalist Christian family that had never accepted him for what he was and had denied him his potential.
My Halloween tradition is simply this: at the Witching Hour on Halloween night, I light a candle, dig out my tape player, and write while listening to the recording of my friend and I talking as we walked through a graveyard so many years ago.
For all that I value my experience, I hope that your Halloween traditions are more joyful than mine.
Happy Halloween! @missy and @rambo and everyone.
- Dhyani