The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I LOVE this time of year...autumn; with it's brisk twinge of smoke in the air and changing palette of colors...it invokes for me the most wonderful time of the year. When ghosties and ghoulies and long legged-y beasties and things that go bump in the night are at their strongest. The veil between this world and the next is at it's most nebulous. Do the dead really walk this earth? Stuck in some broken record groove of their wasted lives? I really don't know, but when the weather turns gloomy and cool, you can almost smell the sepulcher ambiance of the grave wafting through the air.

I grew up in Detroit where "Devil's Night", the night before All Hallows Eve, or Hallow'een became a night not for foolish childrens' pranks of toliet papering your neighbors tree, or throwing eggs at the corner store plate glass windows, but a night of abject terror. Each year, as the day grew closer, your parents wondered if this was the year the garage would be torched, or, whether the abandoned house next door would be fire-bombed by the nascent ne'er-do-wells who lurked, much like those zombies in "Night of the Living Dead" waiting to feast on what little remains of the city were still available for their ghoulish delights...awww...October in Detroit, it still brings a chill to my spine, but, thankfully things have changed...besides, there are no more homes left to burn and what does remain is like the dregs of a bitter witches brew; nothing of substance and only a memory of what was.

I still love this time of year though...none of the rampant, greedy, soul-sucking consumerism of that "other" holiday have appeared yet (although, each year it seems to come sooner and sooner, til, much like Frankenmuth, MI. we will be living christmas day 24-7, 364 days of the year and be encouraged to SPEND, BUY and GIVE...I really despise christmas, but, that is for another blog). Autumn brings out the child-like wonder and innocence in all of us; we really seem to be able to look at the world in that diffused autumnal light and get a true sense of our worth as human-beings. We all need to step back and take a deep breath and realize that our time here is but a brief moment in time so we really need to do what is right; treat others with respect, be nice and just be honest and truthful, you know, all that basic shit you learned in kindergarden, it's not so difficult, really...Anyway, have another peanut butter cup, it will make you feel better. Happy Hallow'een!