Halloweekend

ISSUE #177

If Halloween has one problem, it’s that there is far too much living to pack into one night. There are those Halloweens I feel stretched too thin, with far too many loved ones to see at once. There are also many for me that are dead, with nothing to do but take a walk and try not to picture what raves on without me.

The pictures I see in my head aren’t real, but that can be easy to forget. When films depict parties that don’t exist with people who won’t appear in my life, I’m laced with nostalgia for a past that never was. Up bubbles expectation—of leaves balanced perfectly yellow and red; of creaky, ornate, beautiful homes laced in silver webs and awash in purple light—thoughts that end up maddening.

It’s fitting for a holiday that celebrates death to reflect so aptly the nature of life—that there is far too much to do before we’re gone, and we will always dream it differently. But we feel our imagination as much as we see it, and thoughts change our cells as much as chemicals—meditating would not lower your blood pressure or even out your heart rate if they didn’t.

For this, there’s power to remembering the dead. The imagined is forever on the brink of realization—that line is more permeable than you’d think. People live on in feelings—human alchemy—and sit just as easily beside the living as the breeze moves through the leaves. Their touch is just behind the curtain, their warmth still lingering in the room.