Carving Out Traditions

It’s the week before Halloween! This is going to be an interesting week, I think, as the normal weekly schedule of events is swizzled around from the regular sequence and events are more firmly scheduled and mandatory.

So, no rest for the wicked if the house is to be properly decorated for the proper Ides of Autumn mindset! I’ve laid out the seasonal T-shirts — I’m currently wearing a black T-shirt with the Le Chat Noir printed on it — and the obsidian, onyx, hamsa, and glow-in-the-dark bracelets. I will have to alternate between singing “This is Halloween” and “Making Christmas” to get through the week.

Since I’m the one in our house that likes Halloween, I have to be the one doing all of the decorating. I do agree with Mark that the week before is the time to do the decorating, and that putting out the oversized skeletons and the huge, inflatable pumpkins on October first is a bit much. The strategy for not being overwhelmed is to schlep all of the decorations out of the attic and have them accessible so that individual items may be deployed over a week-long period. A paper bat a day keeps the weariness away!

I purchased a ten pound pumpkin — on impulse — Saturday when I was doing an out-of-band, early-morning banana run for my Elderly Parents. My latest pumpkin carving technique (used several years running) has been to carve a small, serrated disk around the pumpkin’s stem for a lid, and then carve a larger jagged ring around the lid, flip the ring around so that it makes a crown, and then carve a kind of armored mask face underneath. It’s effective and artistic, and I am trying to figure out a way to do something different this year.

Maybe I’ll carve bananas on this year’s pumpkin. Or a Medicare form.

Last year I carved a bat shape out of the back of a jack-o-lantern and managed to project a bat shape onto the wall behind the jack-o-lantern. This was also a craft that caused me to be pleased with my own cleverness, and… maybe I’ll try cats this year in an attempt to sidestep the “been there, done that, got the T-shirt” aspect (looks pointedly at the Le Chat Noir T-shirt he’s currently wearing).

We’ve received our mail-in ballots for the mid-term elections. I suppose for a public service, I should carve “vote” into a pumpkin.

This year Halloween is on a Saturday. I feel like I should have gotten an invitation to a Halloween Party or a ritual or something, but nothing has materialized. I’m thinking that I may have to figure out a gluten free shortbread and make bat cookies for a Halloween cookies and tea time for myself and Mark. Maybe I’ll carve an empty party table onto the pumpkin.

October is also insurance enrollment time; this year our options have been reduced and folks are having to choose between more expensive coverage with local healthcare providers, or cheaper coverage that requires an hour-commute to a doctor’s office. Perhaps I can create a design for a caduceus that is also a dollar sign and carve that on the pumpkin.

For me the season is about mystery and masks, of transitions and transformations, of the intersection of enclaves and frames. As a cross-quarter time, it’s the most interstitial of interstitial periods. I’ve always focused more on the intuitive, divining, secret, regenerative information aspect of Halloween and less on The Ancestors and The Dead (and I suppose by extension The Unborn) aspect. I’m not sure if this makes me practical — because I’m pretty sure most of my dead friends and relatives wouldn’t like to be hauled back from Whatever Otherlife to participate in a (gay, cis-male) Northwestern European, Wiccan-flavored ritual, and I have enough problems trying to gather live folks — or if not focusing on The Ancestors during Halloween makes me an ungrateful and unfeeling lout. (In my defense, I test out as an ENTJ.) I think we’ll put up photos of deceased relatives on the mantel and skip a ritual summoning or dumb supper.

Perhaps I should carve a family tree onto the pumpkin.

Oh! Right! Daylight Saving Time ends on Halloween. Maybe I’ll carve the pumpkin into the shape of a clock and lost hours.


Waffles and Dragon Dancing

Monday, I was shuttling my dad to the Urgent Care in Corvallis, and the whole process was taking hours and hours. (My Dad is fine. He’s fine. He’s Old.) I texted Mark to let him know that I wouldn’t be home in time to Feed The Animals.

He texted back that he’d probably be passed out on his work computer.

“Just make sure you don’t get waffle-face from the keyboard!” I texted back.

“Oh! Waffles! That’s a great idea!” he texted.

So I wasn’t too surprised when I walked into the home filled with the smells of gluten-free waffle batter and maple syrup. And raspberry preserves. And Nutella. For Dinner. And Second Dinner.

There were various digestive consequences, but I’m sure it was worth it.

Thursday night I had a tension headache (not sure if it was from computer work, or driving, or a sugar-crash), which I resolved to address with some Dragon Dancing in front of our house. The evening was clear (the First Real Autumnal Deluge has not occurred yet) and I wanted to dance in the twilight outside with the Dragon Poi LEDs on instead of under the covered YMCA patio, which is harshly lit with canister lights. Also, using the patio sometimes requires negotiation of the space, as Dragon Dancing can take up a quarter of the patio if I let it (and it would be poor form to whap a yogi or kettlebeller if I got carried away).

The new crescent moon was playing hide and seek with some fir trees behind our house, and so I did a little dancing with it. There’s not too much traffic on the street, but I did have to occasionally retreat to our driveway, Dragon a-flutter. Spotting the cars usually isn’t too much of an issue, but there are times when I miss having a bunch of compatriots out in the street with me, ready to shout “Car!” and make everyone scatter to the curb (and it would be poor form to get whapped by a car if I got carried away).

The sky purpled and the first few stars came out. As I was dancing I saw a lone figure walking up the hill in the street. It was Mark coming home from a late afternoon yoga class. I whirled the Dragon over my head and around my body in wide arcs. Then I stepped forward, clasped Mark with one arm, and kissed him while the Dragon’s illuminated body wheeled around us like a comet.

I’m pretty sure this counted as a Moulin Rouge moment — even if the neighbors did not pop out of their houses to engage in choreography.

And nobody got whapped by anything.

Shadows of Prognostication

I got a COVID vaccination and a flu vaccination this Friday. I timed it for ten in the morning so that the chills wouldn’t hit me until around midnight. My body must be getting used to the COVID vaccine, because the chills and fever response has been getting less extreme every time I get the shots. At least this time I wasn’t cold and shivering for what seemed like forever and wrung out with sweat afterward. This time it was just some minor random chills, no real fever (I never felt hot enough to take my temperature), and a desire to sleep through most of Saturday, with bouts of comfort reading old Mercedes Lackey novels (“…for Evil’s still lurking / and that’s the next book!”).

The act of sleeping while my body generated new antibodies seemed appropriate for Saturday’s new moon, and gave me an excuse to feel tired and like a not-very-creative, inactive lump. In sweatpants and my bathrobe. And a hot bath was in there, somewhere.

Coincidental with the new moon came the news that one of our friends has a serious health issue. I’m still processing it, and thoughts, feelings, and images — departed friends; memento mori; actuarial tables; appropriate rituals; the tension between wanting a long, healthy life and knowing that living beyond ninety means that one could be the last of one’s old friends left standing; the Six of Cups, the Eight of Swords, the Hanged Man, the Tower, and various other imagined tarot cards — have not settled down into static clarity. As our friend texted, “treatment is going to suck.” This is one of those things one does not want to Google. I’m not ashamed to say that I ran to my health app to double-check my records for various tests, and I guess I’m glad after all that my recently retired primary healthcare provider was old-school and lab-panel-happy.

I suspect tonight’s scrying ritual and meditation for the new moon will be interesting.

Ten Days Without Mark

Mark is in Mexico on a ten-day Road Scholar package to learn about chocolate and mezcal. For the last six weeks or so, he’s been brushing up on his Spanish and learning about the historical cultures of Mexico (think Maya, Zapotecs, Toltecs, and Olmecs). He wasn’t quite sure if this was a good idea when he first got there, but after the first cooking class he’s pretty impressed with the program. He has made several canine friends in Oaxaca.

The Road Scholar Trip to Mexico is a dry run for things Mark wants to do when he retires and for packages in other places, possibly Egypt.

Aoife stayed up half the night when he first left wondering when he would return. She’s figured out that he’s gone, but I’m pretty sure she still wonders if Mark is going to magically appear at the dog park. Cicero displayed stereotypically feline indifference (there was only one upchucked hairball).

Mark’s absence is reminding me that I need to expand my social networks and increase the time that I am physically visiting with people. I think folks in England do this through the institution of The Pub. Which, of course, makes me think of the scene from the movie, “Educating Rita,” where the titular character asks her mom why she isn’t singing along with a song in a pub, and her mom answers along the lines of, “I’m waiting for a better song.” The response from Rita’s professor upon hearing this story is, “No. She’s waiting for a different song.” Visiting English pubs would be an option if I weren’t in Eugene.

And of course, imagining Eugeneans in a would-be English Pub while singing songs makes me think of Anna Russell’s monologue about folk songs where the singer is wishing they were anywhere else and “weren't in this horrible place, but were in their dear old native land.” Instead of singing songs to cope, I’ve decided that I need to pronounce Eugene (uh-ZHEN) with a French accent.

Since Mark was away and couldn’t attend, I took The Child out to a comedy club to see a “psychic comic.” It was a funny show and the comic was entertaining; he likely has a very good memory, has excellent skills at observing people, and is mentally quick. (Cue the Animaniacs singing, “So urbane-y / Shirley Shirley MacLaine-y”). The audience was fun enough, but I couldn’t help but be reminded of the very cringey audience from when Randy Rainbow came to the Hult Center a few years back. I suppose that when a comic is choosing audience stories and questions as prompts to interact with, there’s more mileage to be had from “Should I get a boob job?” or “Is my cat my sole soulmate?” You know the cringe is strong when the audience collectively sucks their breath through their teeth and goes “Oof.” Several times. It’s a credit to his skill that his answers were both funny and gentle.

As we were getting into our car to leave, a woman in her mid-thirties hit on The Child. This was the same audience member who, during one of the final psychic moments of the show, revealed that her idea of fun was to try to get dizzy (which apparently is hard for her to do), and during her last attempt, she drank insane amounts of alcohol and had her friend’s son twirl her around on playground equipment so hard that she flew off into the air and landed on her face, receiving a mouthful of bark mulch and her tenth concussion. The Child was seemingly oblivious to how her body language abruptly shifted from slouching to her car to one foot forward, shoulders-back-breasts-engaged, and a demi-toss of her long hair as she told us her name.

We wished her a good (and safe) night and drove away.

I did not take The Child dancing at the local, pink-themed, gay dance event a few nights later. I’m not sure which he would be most uncomfortable with: the various couples making out on the dance floor, the sweaty Go-Go Guys dancing in their underwear, the not-always-softcore porn clips playing behind the DJ, or my Doctor Strange dance repertoire (sixty-year-olds are so cute when they try to do their solitary ritual aerobics).

The current dance venue, which wants to be an occult-adjacent English Pub, just lost its liquor license. I’m not sure if there were more or fewer drinks spilled onto the dance floor. If I were pressed, I would say that instead of many small sloshes of alcoholic drinks there was one large non-alcoholic drink that got dropped.

The dance was simultaneously fun and a let-down. The DJ and the event photographer are always welcoming and inclusive. I liked the dancing part and the music for the most part was danceable. I didn’t have any mystic dancing down the moon on the moon paths moments and had to settle for a Dance Meditation while fixing my gaze on the red-lit disco ball and asking myself “Is This a Tree of Life Vision of Splendor, a Vision of Victory, or Have We Collectively Even Gotten Past the Veil of Maya and onto the Higher Astral?” and “Is This Experience Like The Lovers, The Devil, or The Moon Tarot Card?” The rising crawfish in The Moon seems to be resonating with me as a symbol of an awareness of unseen, possibly imaginary, currents at the beginning of a path that starts with a dog and a wolf facing each other—and there was someone in a leather pup mask, now that I think of it.

Everyone there appeared to be with a partner (“Let’s Play Master and Servant,” “I Am So Into You,” “You Can Ring My Bell”) or group (the College Kid Friends, the Women Who Say Whooo!, The Leather Harness Dudes, The Go-Go Guy Posse, HIV Alliance Volunteers) and I felt like I was the only single person there (“Dancing with Myself”). Usually, there are more singletons—maybe this time they were all hanging out on the smoking patio.

I got my aerobics in and when the music shifted from a fun dance tune to a slower, cool-down tune, it was time to leave. I wished that there was someone there that I recognized, because it would have been fun to chat; but the music is Very Loud, and it’s difficult to talk on the smoking patio. I’m hoping when the dance moves to the new venue it has a quieter space for discussions—although the new venue’s right on the edge of campus, and I suspect more undergraduates will make an appearance.

I came home to Aoife and Cicero. Who woke up enough to see if I was going to put any midnight treats in their food bowls. Mark comes home in four days.