Avoidance Tactics


Write...edit...erase. Create...destroy. Any writing that comes out of me lately is trashed almost immediately. Not the most mature idea, especially for a blog in which I profess to be trying to "figure it all out."

There are a few profoundly sad subplots running through my story lately, and writing about them makes me feel carnivorous and parasitic. My sister observed pithily the other day that for many years it seemed like our families and friends saw each other at weddings, baby showers and baptisms. Lately, funerals seem to be the points on the map that connect our paths.

I'll talk more about funerals some other time. Because while they do fascinate me, I just cannot find the correct words to define and describe. Lazy. And sad.

This meandering and wallowing could easily turn this into another blog entry deleted before it see lighht of day.

Halloween For My Kids: Part I

For some appallingly flimsy reasons, my children's school has decided to turn its back on Halloween. The school carnival is now a western-themed, spineless little pageant of hoedown mediocrity. It used to be a traditional neighborhood Halloween carnival with gypsy fortune tellers, apple bobbing, costume contests, cake walks and the most endearing Haunted House I had ever seen.

One year I took my niece inside. She was about 7, and straddling the fence between "too big to be scared by such things" and "scared out of her wits." I held her hand through the dark hallways festooned with cobwebs, dust, flickering candelabra...ghostly moanings and chains rattling, whistling wind sound effects...A group of 8th graders dressed as zombies sat at a long dining room table enacting a ghastly family dinner scene. She was barely holding it together when a Lurch-like butler crept up behind her and dropped a heavy hand on her shoulder.

She freaked. Completely.

In an instant the lights came on and all the zombie 8th graders began singing "It's a Small World After All" to make her unscared. It was so cool.

No more. The school caved to some pressure from some extreme corner of the church and decided not to embrace Halloween any longer. Total copout.

But here at home Halloween is second only to Christmas in anticipation, preparation and decoration. I scare pathetically easily, but I dearly love Halloween. Happily, my kids do too.

Gleaned from a conversation with my Halloween-loving sister, our favorite Halloween movies, in no particular order:


The Hunger (Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie)
Dracula (1979 version directed by John Badham)
American Werewolf in London (More for nosatalgia than anything else)
Near Dark (Underrated, overlooked, Lance Henrikson and Bill Paxton are very effective present-day vampires)
Rosemary's Baby (Gold standard for tension and subtlety)
Fright Night (Totally cheesey but so fun)
Shadow of the Vampire (John Malkovich fans need to see this)
Nosferatu (Atmosphere!!)

To be continued.