Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

  One of the strangest things about autumn is how you can watch it deteriorate. It comes in so bright and beautiful, so alive, despite it all. Everything is so colorful. The world seems to be bursting at the seams in anticipation of a celebration; posing for a picture of a moment in time that will gone all too soon. Each time the wind blows it feels like a pleasant hello, the leaves waving.  The world feels full of potential. And acceptance. So much acceptance.  Halloween comes, and then it goes. And suddenly everything goes strangely silent. From magical to mournful. It's like being at an amusement park after it closes. Everything is still there, it's just so quiet and hollow now. Eerie, almost. Desolate in a way that doesn't quite make sense. It looks almost the same...shouldn't it feel the same? The last leaves flutter to the ground, and I can't tell if they're sad to go or desperate to catch up to their brethren. Afraid to be left behind.  Then suddenly they...

  I went on a drive today. The sky was grey and gloomy, and yellow leaves on almost-bare branches painted it, a little more staggered now than they'd been a two weeks ago.  The wind made them dance, along with the already-brown leaves on the ground, occasionally swirling up and around, as if wondering where to go from here.  Pumpkins smiled at me from some doorsteps; perhaps more than I was expecting in this pre-Christmas world we've entered. Their smiles were different now, though. Less enthusiastic, more melancholy, more knowing.  I could almost hear their thoughts, contemplating the season's end, just so happy to be noticed. It is still autumn, after all.  Decorations lingered on some houses. Hanging ghouls plastered to trees by the on-and-off rain. Twelve-foot skeletons left standing alone, as their more easily packed up brethren have been gone since November 1st morn. Orange lights now shining like a beacon to no one at all.  It's hard to believe these...

I am on a walk. Likely the last walk I will take in my neighborhood before Halloween has passed.  Also likely the last where so many leaves will still be on the trees. We're expecting storms tomorrow, a gloomy day before Halloween. As I walk, I can't help but wish to find myself entrapped in some kind of time loop.  It doesn't seem fair that the next time I walk these streets, so many of the decorations will be gone. The feeling in the air will have evaporated, gone for a whole year yet again. I look at the road in front of me and I see the stress of the holiday season. I see springtime allergies. I see the inevitable battle with summer and the depression it brings me. To think I will have to endure several months of neverending blinding daylight and stifling heat again before this all returns is almost too much to bear, even though it's only the 29th of October.  I'm just not ready for it to be over yet. I look around and try to see if I can find the portal. The po...

  When I was little, I often dreamed of witches. I blamed it on the abundance of witch decor I saw as a child. The nearby farm with the witch attached to the wooden orange moon. The house I trick-or-treated at every single year, that fashioned an old lamppost into a witch flying across the moon. It was all so deeply ingrained into my Halloween experience. When I got a little older, I started to believe that there was a witch out there watching over me. That she would come to me, maybe on my sixteenth birthday, like Sabrina on my favorite TV series, and whisk me away into my real life. I didn't see Halloweentown until my thirteenth Halloween had already passed, but I definitely had my suspicions after the fact that perhaps my parents had just let my powers grow dormant, or something. Clearly I was meant to be on the bus back to that town.  The older I've gotten, I've stopped searching the skies for Santa Claus, stopped imagining faeries in colorful gardens, all of that. But ...

 I went for a walk tonight. I don't often take walks in the dark, as the streets in my neighborhood are not really built for pedestrians casually strolling after the sun goes down. Sidewalks are minimal, brush is overgrown, there are bumps in the road... But, the October air was simply too delicious this evening to not take advantage of it. And so I set off, on a very small, deliberate journey. I find that Halloween-time hasn't changed a bit since my childhood. There are always the houses that are dark and seem almost sealed shut. My street is a strange array of the bright and the dark. A few houses from home, my path is lit nicely. Then I descend into darkness.  But then, as I pass the little bridge, actually part of a driveway, that reminds me so very much of the bridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, I am suddenly greeted by a burst of light. A voice, a memory, in the back of my head, says, triumphantly: Once you cross that bridge, my friend, the ghost is through; his power ends...

  I went for my first walk in ages tonight.  The last real walk I remember going on, was a December morning, when Halloween was being discarded.  I remember seeing pumpkins by garbage cans, empty spaces where ghosts once flew.  The ghosts of ghosts, you might say.  The world hasn't looked the same, since then. But now, now it is autumn. It is that magical time when September shifts into almost-October; goes from being my birthday month to almost-Halloween.  I walk tonight, and I see the beginnings.  Not everyone has decorated yet, but it is starting. The world is beginning to look like a place I recognize once more, and old friends are appearing on lawns or in doorways, or peering down at me from windows.   I'm not sure if I'm waking up from a dream, or have fallen back to sleep.  But whatever it is, it feels good. The best I have felt in a long time. "Welcome back," I say to the decorations, and to autumn and Halloween, and to myself. "It fe...

  Today, we stand at the beginning of the road. The start of something we've anticipated for so long, it sometimes felt like it was never going to arrive.  Today the sky darkens in the most inviting shade of gray, bringing a breeze and a gentle flutter of leaves just starting to turn shades of yellow or red or brown.  Our memories harken us back to the place that feels like some fictional dreamworld each year, a world ablaze in color, celebrating the things that most people don't dare speak of, when it isn't time. It's almost hard to believe this is the same world we've existed in all summer long, with its endless days of blinding sunlight and green, green, green, as far as the eye can see.  Some are sad about summer's end, but we know it won't go without a fight. There will still be hot days, still moments where the light is too bright, although the summer has lasted so long already. Today we see the start of the most fleeting season. Summer clings on, leav...

  The most amazing thing happened to me, on a Saturday afternoon.  The date was August 30th, just two days before Labor Day; the start of September, and, thankfully, the unofficial (but official, in my book) end of summer.  I wound up at a local toy shop, coming away with some tiny plushies. (Two of them Christmas themed, ironically, as I am working toward finding the magic in all things once more .) As I exited the store, something caught my eye beyond the fence leading to the next residential street.  A very tall pumpkin man seemed to be walking toward a house. My mind snapped back to when I was six years old, the very first time the Great Pumpkin came to visit me. How I'd heard him in the night, a candle rattling around in his head as he did his work, ensuring the happiest of Halloweens for the truest of believers. How special it felt to know I was one of his Chosen.  I'd always hoped to thank him one day. I quietly tiptoed around the fence, out into the narr...

  It was the one gloomy day we really had all October. It had been unseasonably warm. So sunny. The atmosphere of Halloween, of   'spooky season', if you will, was nearly lost.  But that day was different. Good things loomed on the horizon for me. I was about to go off in celebration of my favorite holiday, in my favorite place. If I was lucky, which I was, I might complete the final leg of a particular piece of my healing journey on that trip. I don't know that I've ever been more excited. I called my mother that morning, as I took a walk around the block. Her birthday was the next day. We talked about everything, but mostly how happy I was.  It felt like magic. I came home and sat out in the yard, looking around as I always do, taking in one last glimpse of my home in October. It's always so strange to look at anything, any place, and think, ' Next time I'm here, it won't be October anymore.' I may as well say: Next time I'm here's I won...

 Five years ago today, I started this blog.  I've never truly been one for "New Year's resolutions", or New Year's at all, really, but just before 2020, I promised myself that I would start blogging again. I've loved to write since I was six years old. I very clearly remember the first little "picture book" I put together. I had actually just watched an episode of Lamb Chop's Play-Along,  where Shari Lewis gave instructions on how to make a little flip book of sorts of a girl jumping rope. I've always been a DIY disaster, so my attempt at recreating this little scene did not go according to plan. It frustrated me, but I somehow got the idea to turn it into a story that I titled "Jill's Bike". I don't remember the specifics of the story, but I believe it was about a girl, obviously named Jill, getting frustrated with her attempts to jump rope, and finally deciding to go and ride her bike instead. It was a short little story, ...

 Sometimes I truly feel like this is the hardest point on the road back to Halloween. I spend November mourning, and soaking up what is left of autumn. The remnants of Halloween still linger, though not as much as I wish that they would. December brings the inevitable start of Christmas, despite that fact that many have been locked in since the second the clock struck midnight on November 1st. It becomes my battle, in a way, to keep Halloween alive when everyone is so distracted. To be a voice for those of us who, maybe, don't find Christmas time quite as merry. I am a safe space, not only for myself, but to the others that need Halloween as much as I do.  It's hard not to get distracted. As December descends into its final week before the supposed "big day", I get lost in nostalgia. I don't, necessarily, want to fall down the Christmas rabbit hole, the way Jack Skellington did, but I think about it. And the thought, the memory, becomes all-consuming for a few day...

Do I rush the seasons? Probably. Autumn has always been the only season for me. The other seasons have their moments, some more than others, but I never feel as alive as I do in September and October. I don't necessarily mean to wish time away, but I can't help but yearn for what sets my heart ablaze, whether it's the dead of winter, the start of spring, or a day those unlike myself would deem 'perfect beach weather'.  Everyone has things they love, things they surround themselves with to make the most out of life. Mine just happens to be 'seasonal'.  Even as Halloween becomes more popular within mainstream society, so many people still don't understand the desire to hold onto that feeling all year round. Sometimes, even those within the Halloween community act like it takes away from things somehow, while I know I'd be miserable if I didn't live my life the way I do. I have tried to give it up, a few different times for a few different reasons, ...

  It's hard, sometimes, not to feel like a costumed clown, out in a world that you feel no real connection to, except for during that one specific time.  I wonder, sometimes, am I the fool? Or is it everyone else? Do I sit behind a billowing black veil, unable to see past the shadows, or is it that no one else really sees me, or even the potential within themselves to be more than they are? Sometimes it feels like a cruel joke, to fit in for a season and then be cast out once again.  But how, I must ask, can it be foolish to simply live your own truth? To do what makes you happy, regardless of how others perceive you?  Perhaps I will sit behind this veil forever then, or at least until my time comes again. I don't think it's foolish, at all.

  The shadows in the cemetery that day were unlike anything I'd ever seen before. It was more than a cloudy afternoon. It felt ominous, like a warning. A warning I should have heeded ages ago, if I'm honest. I look back on every tear shed, every whispered word, every time I should have put a stop to a desperate fairytale that was spinning out of control. I question my sanity, when I look back on it. Who was I? Or perhaps, who was I  trying  to be, and for what purpose?  Why was I looking for something I'd had all along?  I'll never forget how blue the sky was, the moment hope returned.  I had to shut my eyes to see clearly, but when I opened them again, the world was vivid, as if that shadowy night never happened. Or, at the very least, happened somewhere far, far away.  As I finally stood up again, I nearly tripped over my own feet, like a newborn animal. Rebirth, it seems, was the theme of the day. I felt something catch me, holding me steady once mo...

 The December pumpkin is tired. The December pumpkin has been living in fear. A nagging fear since the very dawn of November 1st, as the world around them turned into something they didn’t recognize. Beautiful, natural colors replaced with blinding, manufactured lights. Their brethren rotted, or simply discarded, as men made of snow that has not yet fallen take their place. A forgotten world, that just a short time ago, brought joy to so many. The December pumpkin has been told, for so long now, that their time is up. That they shouldn’t exist in this world beyond October. They’re not needed, unimportant. Just succumb to the rot. Fall in line. Surely a pumpkin existing beyond October should have no identity of its own.  There are, of course, many pumpkins who fall victim to this mentality once October has passed. They rot. They crumble. They roll over to make way for Santa Claus and whatever menagerie of colorful creatures he brings with him. For some, there is no turning back...

 I saw a movie once; I think it was some variation of Barbie. In this movie a fairy realm existed, all the time, invisible to the naked eye. Only when the characters wore special glasses, could they see the true magic around them, the magic that the fairies saw every day without effort. I don't know when or why I watched this movie, I'm thinking I may have been babysitting a child, likely the niece of my ex, but I can tell you it's always made me think of Halloween, and the things I've struggled to put into words for years and years.  I went for a walk yesterday, and the thing that struck me so hard about the world around me was the sudden familiarity of it. I think a lot about a walk I took on October 29th of last year, and the sights I saw. Every walk or drive I took between then and now, I saw the echoes of these creatures and these sights. The residual feeling of something that was and would eventually be again. I don't know if other people's Halloween decor...

The start of autumn, to me, always feels like seeing something in real life that you've seen in a dream. I remember once, during one of my many, many dreams about trick-or-treating on a day other than October 31st, seeing a house. I think the house, in the dream, was owned by a vampire man with a yard full of bats. Sometime later, I was in another state visiting family, and, because my father was in training for a marathon at the time, he insisted we go for a walk. On that walk that night, I saw a house that greatly resembled the one from my dream. It invoked a similar emotion, and lit up a spark inside of me, of excitement and curiosity. I believe this was the first time I ever experienced that, seeing something from a dream in reality, but it certainly wasn't the last.  I don't remember all of my dreams, but the ones I do remember tend to stay with me. The imagery, the emotions, the general feeling of it.  And autumn itself is very similar.  It's no secret that I thin...

  It's September 9th and I've spent the day depressed. Yesterday was my birthday. I briefly think about the fact that when I was younger, on the internet, I always said my birthday was the 9th rather than the 8th, because back then, giving out personal information online was a terrifying idea.  It's funny how things change. My birthday this year, well, it was a disaster. And that had everything to do with how hot and sunny it was.  I've never considered myself a summer baby. September is fall, whether it's the 1st or the 30th. The last stepping stone on the way to October; one of two months that truly feels similar to it. September the Hopeful, and November the Mournful.  But I guess this year, Mother Nature just had to tell me I was wrong. I won't forgive the demon summer for striking me down on what was supposed to be my special day. Seasonal depression can only be endured for so long. Tonight, though, I step outside, and the wind picks up. It sounds like a ho...

  It’s truly a strange feeling to look at something and think “I can’t wait to watch you die.” But yet, as the Gregorian months of April and May drone on, propelling us closer to summer with every passing hour, as the leaves emerge and everything becomes an endless sea of green, lightly peppered with other colors that seem manufactured even if they aren’t, that is all I can think. I can’t wait to watch them die. Green leaves are so boring. And the world is so green in the spring. It seems like the decor of a minimalist, married to one color scheme, clean but blah . And I am anything but a minimalist. I don't understand why spring and summer are considered so beautiful; why they make people seem to feel so alive.  I can't wait to watch them die. As I look up at the thick, green leaves, remembering a restaurant I frequented as a child that was built to look like a rainforest, I start to picture them in all sorts of vibrant hues of orange, yellow, red, even brown. I can't wait...

  I don't think I ever understood the world's obsession with spring. Perhaps it's because I've always found new beginnings ominous, as opposed to exciting. You could say I'm averse to change. But then, autumn is a time of change as well, isn't it? Regardless of the reason, I never understood what is so exciting about baking sun and bright skies. Or how the flowers, in shades of pink, purple, yellow...or the green grass and leaves, for that matter, were supposedly more beautiful, more inviting, than the explosions of different shades of orange against a spooky gray sky.  Most people want to fast forward to this time of year, but I wish I could fast-forward through it. Spring and summer...what is so lovely to the rest of the world, is a time of physical and mental exhaustion for me. It's a strange thing, when I really think about it. The countdown to Halloween is longest in the winter months, as the clock resets. We cling to the memories of last Halloween, so ...