Halloween-blah-blah

Turnip Jack-o-lantern, Wiki Commons

This is not going to be a post gaaning aan about the “reason for the season” for Halloween or Samhain or whatever it is you wanna call it. I live in the southern hemisphere. Any neo-Pagan worth his or her salt will know we’re actually celebrating Beltaine here this time of the year. But that doesn’t stop me from tapping into the energy from my brethren in the north, for whom October 31 is firmly a night to remember the dead. The shared subconscious doesn’t worry about such niceties of summer and winter.

Two years ago on this day, a close friend and mentor of mine passed away. Trust him to wait ’til October 31. He was forever the merry prankster. All things considered, 2010 in general hadn’t been a good year for me. I tried to tip myself over the edge too. Stupid in hindsight, but then due to various reasons I’m not going to go into, I wasn’t in my right mind, and at the time I didn’t see any point in remaining alive. No point in convincing someone that life’s worth living when they can’t see the forest for the trees. When they don’t feel as though they have anything meaningful to contribute to the world.

I had a reprise last year, or maybe these were ripples from the previous year, which culminated in me experiencing a seizure followed by a life-threatening medical condition and five days in hospital with near liver failure.

This year, I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. I’m sober. I haven’t intentionally drunk alcohol for almost a year. No more wild nights. Call me a boring teetotaller if you will, but my life is now underpinned by a sense of intense clarity, as though I can view the world through a lens that has been wiped clean of grime and bugs. What I feel the most? Relief. Relief that I don’t have to chase after illusory pleasures that dissipate in the garish light of dawn. Because that sort of pleasure, at the bottom of a bottle, can never satisfy. It is never enough, and the more you drink, the more that hole keeps getting bigger and bigger inside you until none of the wine in the world will ever fill the abyss. But I don’t expect you to understand, unless you’ve actually stood on the brink yourself.

Yes, I’m going to die one day, but there’s no sense in obsessing about the inevitable. There’s also no sense in engaging in the sorts of behaviour that will hasten that particular outcome. Death’s waiting for all of us. Might as well extract every ounce of pleasure from life, and engage in activities that promote life.

So what if I didn’t play guitar for more than a decade? There were always other excuses (too tired, too busy). Fuck it. I’ve been playing almost every day now for six months now. I indulge almost daily in the activity. It’s time I’ll never get back, but fuck it feels better than wasting my attention on social media talking about the pieces I’m intending to play or harping on about the bad old days. I played my first performance recently. I didn’t falter. That sense of accomplishment is without price.

Oh, walking the dogs. Seems a waste of time doesn’t it? Scum it. I’ll drag the husband out. We might [oh gasp] have a real conversation instead of him zombie-ing out with the PlayStation and me watering an imaginary garden that exists only on the internet. The pooches of course love the exercise, and we might not be burning calories at gym but at least we’re enjoying the environment in which we’ve chosen to live. I never saw much of it over the past few years because I was always hunched in front of a computer screen.

Hell, I’ve started reading. I mean *really* reading—not just fiction, but philosophy, biographies, histories. And I’ve been learning to do stuff. Stupid shit like crochet. I always talked about one day learning how to do this. I’m actually *doing* it now. Teaching myself as I go along. And oh, look, I’m *making* stuff. Finishing stuff.

For three years I chased an ideal of work, that by spending hours and hours of my life *after* work each day slaving away on editing other people’s manuscripts, that I could somehow become a better person, drag myself out of my situation, and make up for the chaos in my personal life. This was not indulgence. It was me hiding away, burying myself alive, making excuses as to why I was not living. I was the living dead.

So, October 31, this is the day I consider remembering not just my dead, but also my past harvests—whether they be poor or good. There is no beating myself up about mistakes, but there is acceptance, and commitment to move ahead. I own my mistakes, I remember them but instead of allowing them to become millstones, I use them to lay the foundations for building a living temple in which I enthrone the flame of my Self. A temple. Not a mausoleum.

#Friday Flash: Memory Lane

I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a game. It was more of a ritual. Suzanne and I would meet each Halloween at a small restaurant in Kalk Bay. The place had been there for ages—one of those spots that kept their doors open over the years despite the downturn in economic climes.

“You’re looking amazing!” the manager told me when I arrived. He was one of those rare ones, I gathered, with a gift for recalling faces. If he knew what was good for him he wouldn’t remember me the next time. He’d shown me to my table last year, and the year before that. I liked the view. I liked the memories. I came here even if Suzanne couldn’t make it.

“I stay out of the sun,” I told him with a pointed smile. “You have no idea how harmful UV radiation can be.”

I shouldn’t take such risks but the older our kind became, the more prone we were to being creatures of habit. And I was keen to see Suzanne. We hadn’t gotten together in more than a decade because she’d been living overseas with her second husband. Foreign travel understandably posed difficulties for those of us who were night dwellers.

Although I no longer had a pulse, I couldn’t help but feel a small lurch of excitement as I made my way to our usual table—one that overlooked the tidal pool. And, as promised in her last communiqué, Suzanne was there. She had her back to me, so did not see me until I slipped into the seat opposite hers.

“Oh!” Suzanne pressed a hand to her chest. “You startled me.”

“I’m sorry.” I grimaced, partially from giving her a fright but also because of her appearance. Even more lines marred her face and her once nut-brown hair was streaked liberally with grey. “How are you?” I held my hand out to her and she took it, squeezing lightly. Her skin warmed mine. The last time we’d met, she’d thrown herself at me and we’d embraced, squealing like young girls.

“I’m fine,” Suzanne replied. Her eyes glistened and I could smell the sour burst of emotion from her. “You haven’t...” She wanted to complete the sentence with “aged a bit”.

We never discussed my condition or, indeed, the special needs that accompanied it. It was enough that she was aware of it, and that she didn’t judge me.

The skin around her eyes tightened briefly. “Charles was diagnosed with colon cancer last month.”

“That’s terrible,” I said, but I meant the words more for her than for the husband I’d never met.

Suzanne withdrew her hand then waved the waiter over, not quite meeting my gaze. She ordered us both a glass of red wine then waited for the man to get out of hearing. “I’ve filed for divorce. I can’t go through this a second time.” She meant living through the slow death of a loved one. The second husband had eventually died of a series of strokes, but he had been bedridden for almost two years. She’d gone through an almost literal hell.

I inclined my head. “I won’t think ill of you.” I was the last one to pass judgment. Especially since I’d long lost track of how many I’d killed. Some inadvertently. A few not.

Suzanne’s laugh was shallow and bitter. “I thought you’d like to know I went to our school reunion.”

I’d been unable to attend. For obvious reasons.

She dug in her handbag and produced a tablet in a slick leather binder. I watched with interest as she scrolled past icons to bring up a folder of pictures.

“You’ll laugh.” She handed me the thing. “One of the teachers made up a series of before and after pictures. I thought you’d be interested.”

I hardly recognised the faces, even of the photos taken when we’d been younger. A surprised hiss escaped me when I encountered the first images of me. My hair long, straight hair had been almost white. The colour now was more that of burnished gold and it looped in lazy ringlets through its own perverse will. The better to be more beguiling, my dear.

My eyes were wide and innocent in a sun-kissed face, a faint sprinkling of freckles across my nose. I looked like a baby. Not this dead white thing I was now. I paused at a picture taken on our valedictory day. Almost a hundred girls posed on the stands by the hockey field with Table Mountain in the background. Our beige uniforms couldn’t quite detract from the vibrancy of our smiles.

“Remember that day?” Suzanne said. “Mrs De Wet made us all take our jerseys off so we could look the same. We just dropped them in a scattering of discarded knitwear.”

“And I recall telling you they looked like empty skins, like cocoons or something that had hatched.” For some peculiar reason I felt ill. I could feel the ghost of sunlight on my skin, and the salty tang of the sea breaking on the rocks below the window made me think of blood, thick and hot on my tongue.

We shared a silent moment and I couldn’t help but think how we were both victims of time, and how differently things had turned out for each of us.

Suzanne gave a nervous laugh. “None of us were butterflies, were we?”

I shook my head. “And there are no knights in shining armour, either.”

We’d be back next year. I knew it. Suzanne would be a year older. I’d still be the same. She’d never ask to be turned, and I’d never offer.

* * * *

If you liked my vampires, you might want to try out two of my novellas, The Namaqualand Book of the Dead and What Sweet Music They Make.