I went for a walk this morning.
The last time I took this exact same route was on the evening of October 29th, and it felt like being in a movie. The sun was setting, the leaves were reaching peak color, and everyone’s Halloween decorations were up and running. I felt perfectly alive in my surroundings, and like anything could happen.
At times I felt like I was in some sort of opening scene for a new installment of a movie like Trick ‘r Treat.
There was an anticipation in the air that reminded me of how I used to feel as a child, when my father used to “patrol the streets” on the night before Halloween, and I could just feel the spookiness and excitement of what was to come. It was a sign that everyone was finally feeling the way I do all year round, almost as if the universe was giving me one huge gift. I don’t think there’s anything else quite like the magic of that time just before Halloween, when everything just glows and radiates. It truly feels like anything can happen, and it truly feels like I have a real place in the world, like I fit right in with my surroundings. I nod to billowing sheet ghosts in the wind and inflatable pumpkins guarding staircases, as if we’re all in on the same secret; a secret that everyone else can only hear for a fleeting period of time.
Of course, when I returned from Sleepy Hollow on the afternoon of November 2nd, many of these decorations were already gone. As I passed the houses where they once stood, on the way to work, or on shorter walks to try and capture some last-minute pictures, I would feel their absence, remembering how they watched me on that evening of the 29th, how exciting it all was. Sometimes I wonder where they are now, in storage crates or locked away in a garage or shed…Do their owners smile when they see them, in the off-season, or do they harbor little or no meaning at all, simply existing because Halloween decorations are “supposed” to, in October? How strange would it be to these people, to know that someone passing their home misses their decorations, as if they were kindred-spirit friends she only got the pleasure of knowing for a short time? Or, perhaps, do I just miss feeling accepted?
These were the things that went through my mind on my walk this morning. Almost all of the decorations are gone now. Most people no longer even leave a stray scarecrow or pumpkin out for Thanksgiving, which is so strange to me. Perhaps my mother was just being nice to me, but she always allowed me to leave the pumpkins and scarecrows out when I was a child, perhaps turning the pumpkins around if they had scarier faces.
The few houses that do still have things out, though, be they stray Halloween-specific decorations or pumpkins left on doorsteps, uncut, are truly the most melancholy of all. There’s a triumph to them, yes, but there’s also a forlorn-ness. It’s akin to that thing that happens in movies, when a toy or other inanimate object comes to life, and then immediately drops back into lifelessness when a human enters the room. No matter how vibrant some of these decorations are, there is just a sense that the magic and light has gone out of them once October has passed. They take on a sense of something discarded, forgotten. Sitting out not because they are wanted, but because their existence is now so insignificant that their owners don’t even realize they’re there anymore. They’re still every bit as beautiful, as comforting, but they also seem sad. Tired. As if they know no one is viewing them in the same way that they were at the beginnings of the fall season. The bare trees and brittle, brown leaves make us feel as if we’ve stayed too long at a funeral, as decomposition sets in, but we can’t stop mourning. We won’t stop.
It’s strange, the reflections that can be seen on a drab, late-November morning. Not even a full month later, how can everything seem so dead? How can it feel so much like Halloween never happened? Why is it so hard to hold on?
I stand with those little pumpkins, though; with the skeleton enthusiastically waving at the people who can’t seem to see him anymore. We are Halloween, and though we may be sad, or feel out of place, we never stop existing. We remain who we are, as the world around us changes, and wait for it all to catch up with us again.
I will take more walks, and remember the night the sentinels stood, smiling at me. I will feel sad and empty, but I will wait for that glorious evening when the world catches up to my spooky friends and me once more.
Stay spooky, my friends.
(PS, I apologize for how grainy some of these pictures are, but many of them were taken from across streets and other safe places while walking, so they were zoomed in on strangely.)
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