Month: November 2015 (page 1 of 1)

Halloween may be a made up holiday. It may have been co-opted, Hallmarked, and sugared like a lot of U.S. holidays, but I transcend this. For me, Hallows Eve is more than all of this. It’s about acknowledging the metaphysical, ideas of other worldliness, the possibility of ghosts. It’s about witches and history, a collective human history and a personal, family history.

Both my maternal great grandmother, Martha, and her father Valentine (my great great) practiced cupping. Cupping, as I understand it, is an ancient healing practice where hot cups are placed on the skin to draw blood to the surface. Similar to acupuncture, cupping activates blood flow, helps with pain, and promotes healing. The practice of cupping was controversial, at least for Valentine and Martha. I don’t remember who told me this family story, but apparently the banker in the town where Valentine lived asked him to heal his leg. The man was suffering from gangrene, and the doctor in the town wanted to amputate. Valentine healed the banker’s leg, but when the townspeople got wind of this, they threatened to hang Valentine as a witch. Martha continued cupping in secret, and some of her family disapproved, saying she was basically practicing medicine without a license.

So on Hallows Eve, I think about healing. And witches. I honor the millions of people who died in Europe and those who died here in the States. I treasure the fact that I come from witches, that I am open to “alternative” medicine. I try to focus on the things that need healing in this world, namely the imbalance we humans seem to still have with our natural environment. I remember that we need pollinators, predators, trees, clean air, and water. I focus on how we humans need healing when it comes to our ignorance and intolerance of each other’s differences. I try to slow down my fears and open my brain. On October 31st, I reflect until I come up with ways that I can take personal action. For me, this is the beginning of my New Year’s resolutions.

I am told that Martha was a fun, mischievous person. I like that I am like her. On Hallows Eve, I have one costume, and I wear it proudly and playfully in the woods.

Our trio of little villages is bonkers for Halloween.

Washington Irving’s house is just down the road from us. You can tour it by candle light. You can visit Irving’s grave and the grave of his notorious character, the Headless Horseman, in the Old Dutch cemetery in Sleepy Hollow. Among the activities that occur throughout the month of October, among the haunted hayrides, haunted houses, and performative retellings of Irving’s stories is my personal favorite, Blaze.

Tickets for Blaze go on sale on September 1. By the end of the day on September 1st, and I swear this is true, tickets are nearly sold out. This event happens every night for the whole month, and it brings in approximately 4,000 people per night. Here’s why it is so popular and amazing…

Blaze is an outdoor exhibit of jack-o-lanterns, and these are no ordinary pumpkins carved with scary or whimsical faces. Viewers meander through the grounds of Van Cortlandt Manor to observe over 7,000 jack-o-lanterns hung from trees as bats, bees, and butterflies, scattered along the ground as spiders or baby dinosaurs emerging from their eggs, hidden in bushes as cats, arched as constellations, stacked as totem poles, and arranged onto shelves as pottery. These are the smaller scaled pumpkins. There are also huge dinosaurs, sea serpents, life size mummies and witches, and a giant spider web. Blaze is my kind of the spectacle!

I have to credit the folks who write about this event. The Historic Hudson Valley has a great mission, and they “sell” Blaze beautifully. Check out more details from their site: http://www.hudsonvalley.org/events/blaze

Blaze is touristy, but having grown up near both Wisconsin Dells and Orlando, tourism is fine with me, especially if it involves being outside on a crisp, autumn night and seeing something so creative. I hope to make Blaze one of my many Halloween traditions.

Red against blue in October …may it stay behind my eyes all winter long.

This is Maple, the sweet tree that lives outside our living room and Benjamin’s studio.

She gave us this yellow.

Thank you, Maple.

At the end of October, wind and rain shook the trees loose, and now the ground is covered in yellow, red, and orange leaves.

It was sad and beautiful to watch.

When Autumn* begins, this is how I feel. The light is gorgeous, truly mesmerizing. I can’t place the day when it shifted this year…most likely late September, early October, but the light softened. The air cooled, and I felt melancholy and nostalgic. As my neighbor and I sipped tea, looking into the back woods from her garden, she said that Autumn light was her favorite.

It is beautiful. But as Everett Reuss has written in his travel journals, nature sometimes offers beauty so hypnotizing it hurts. It’s as if this season is saying, “Here. Take a good long look. Soak up these hot colors as much as you can. Get them in, and keep them behind your eyes, because there are some months of grays and browns coming, and you’re going to need this memory for your sanity.”

Maybe this is just what I hear Autumn saying. I am partial to the restless light of Spring and the energetic light of Summer. I like the wake up feeling of these seasons.

Still, Autumn light is exquisite, dreamy, sleepy, and perfect for writing poetry. Her colors are gifts. Therefore, with this triptych of Benjamin’s photos, I honor this sad and beautiful.

*Yes, I capitalize the seasons. I love the German grammar rule of capitalizing all nouns, and I choose to selectively highlight my favorite nouns.