From the depths of time and the astral planes of
existence, I will my consciousness to coalesce into spirit for a trip home. Riding
on the interstellar currents, I enter the Milky Way Galaxy and on to the Solar
System grabbing the solar wind, bending it to my purpose, propelling me on my
return to earth.
Mother is in sight now looking
like a blue and white marble, increasing in size as I approach her. Some things you never forget, like riding a
bicycle and I find my continent, country, town, cemetery and plot, infusing my
bones and simultaneously annoying nearby maggots in the process. Ah! It is good
to be corporeal again, even if I only inhabit my rickety old set of bones for
one night!
I always loved this time of the
year when the harvest is in and the vegetation is dying. The squirrels scamper here
and there, panicking as they hide their nuts for the long winter ahead. Black
bears eat voraciously, building up a reserve supply of fat to draw on while
hibernating through the icy bone chilling cold ahead. Fish in the ocean eat
smaller species with less selectivity than during the slow summer months when
they can be more faddish preparing for their migration to the continental
shelf. Fishermen and Fisherwomen capitalize on this sudden frenzied lack of
prudence to fill their pails and load their freezers for a time when only the
most hearty head out on the ocean as Mother Earth bundles herself up, preparing
for the lack of sunshine and shuts down all nonessential functions.
Harvest is a short transitional
time of the year when living and dead organic matter commingle at this halfway
point between Equinox and Solstice. The ancient Celts called it Samhain, literally
meaning end of summer and believed that the dimensions of the living and
the dead briefly scraped across each other in their trajectories and that the
living and the dead walked the earth together, brushing past and through each
other. To avoid being accosted, the living dressed as the dead.
Tonight is a night for fun! If I
sauntered out from some dreary, foul, windswept cemetery on any other night of
the year dusting soil and worms from my bones it would be considered poor taste
in the extreme with a big hullabaloo and panic in the streets, but tonight I am
welcome, even encouraged in my exploits! Didn’t you know that Queens is the
borough of cemeteries and the dead outnumber the living! That is one for my
team! Yes tonight I am an expired rock star. Fellow revelers pass by exclaiming
“Hello!” A werewolf dripping blood from his mouth wishes, “Have a pleasant
evening!” Two scarecrows complement my costume asking ,”How long did it take to
create this illusion?” I respond “Six months ,” And wish them all “Happy
Halloween!”
Tonight I am going to the
Halloween Parade. I reload my MetroCard
and hop on the F train. My train car includes some businessmen, a break dancer, three people dressed as
skeletons and a variety of diabolical serpents, hideous dragons, grotesque
humanoids and some nightmarish monsters. It’s basically a normal evening on the
New York City Subway System. I am seemingly invisible in this crowd and nobody
even glances my way. Incidentally, it sounds a little revolting but you would
be surprised how many people have confessed to me over the years that they have
skeletons in their closets! The living really do go to a lot of trouble
creating some very creative costumes that even scare me and I’m dead.
Walking down the streets of
Greenwich Village on any night one will see some strange sights, but tonight is
most impressive. Stepping into a delicatessen on MacDougall Street, a cacophony
of wonderful smells impinge on my senses creating a comforting feeling. Children
are running excitedly out of the store having received their treat bags from
the owner. I purchase a coffee and muffin from a six foot six Joker while Jack
and Jill bicker on line behind me, fighting over whether to order a pickle with
their meatball hero.
“What are you crazy pickles don’t
go with a meatball hero?”Jack exclaims.
“So who told you that you have
to eat it?”Jill retorts.
As Jack mutters under his breath
I sense marital discord, guessing that the honeymoon is over and it’s all
downhill now for Jack and Jill.
It is cold tonight and dried
leaves mixed with litter swirl down the street in little tornadoes. A giant six
pack of Heineken beer passes by me in the street. It is composed of six men and
women dressed in green jumpsuits carrying the large six pack cardboard carton appropriately
painted with their green shoes and heads sticking out. One bottle tips his beer
cap hat to me as he passes. I excuse myself for bumping into a somewhat rotund Minnie
Mouse who has overtaken the narrow sidewalk while a pair of skinny grey aliens walk
around us stepping into the street to avoid the collision. Mixing in with a
group of gruesome goblins and vicious, vile vampires, I sneak into the front of
the line right behind the skeleton marionettes that always lead off the parade
and strike up a conversation with a blue cyclops wearing a monocle to my right.
Maybe this year I will be
interviewed by Rochelle Boone or Roger Clark from the NY 1 News team that
always cover and televise the parade.
It is a great night to be dead
or alive.
“Happy Halloween!”
Jim
Oct. 2019
