I Love Halloween

First of all, Happy Halloween to all my dear Witchy Friends out there! ^_^ May you all have a bewitching day, and get lots of candy and tricks. ^_~. I can already see the image in my head, of a funny gay situation:

"Treat of Trick!"

Answer No.1: "I take the trick."
Answer No. 2: "Ain't the same?"
Answer No. 3: "How about I treat the trick."
Answer No. 4: "Show me the trick and maybe I'll treat it."
Answer No.5: "I'm the trick."

Up to a few years, Halloween wasn't part of the Costa Rican traditions. I still remember when I was little that the kids of one family dressed up and ran up and down the streets screaming "Halloween! Halloween!" from the top of their lungs. There was no point in knocking doors and asking for treat-or-trick because nobody celebrated this festivity. The parents of these kids were with them and smiled, and we all thought that they had no shame. My mother frowned her nose at them and my father labeled them as "brainwashed by the yankees and making fools of themselves, as the yankees wanted them to". Well, okay, my dad has never thought anything nice of Americans and was convinced that Sesame Street and the Muppets were shows designed to program the minds of young kids to become their system's slaves.

Anyway, today only in a few neighbourhoods and in a few houses, kids can go asking for candy, but Halloween has been taken up mostly for partying. Pretty much all discos and bars are sold out, or charge insanely high entrance fares to partake in a costume-party.

Another thing I've always found wicked is that we have heard that some people in the U.S. go to work in costume. Yesterday he was Mr. Barry, but today, in Halloween, he's a Pirate (hopefully not in Somalia, Boosaase). Back then it was something unheard of, and just another think to pin on the "have-no-brain" yankees. Then, the call centers come, hire loads of young flesh into no-future positions, allienate them from their own environment... and they have Halloween with costumes worn at the office. Cowboys, ninjas, Sailor Moons and all sorts of... sorts, parade around in cubicles where normal-LOOKING people sat the day before, with headsets under their hats or carefully over tiaras, haloes, wigs, horns, antennas and other contraptions, while answering:

"Thank you for calling HP's Solution Center, how can I be of your assistance?"

If people could see them, they would scream:

"Holy Fuck! A black eyed, sexy leprechaun with Mexican accent wants to fix my computer, which I just hooked to the TV (instead of the monitor), broke the cup holder (CD Unit), or won't start even if I can see the plug because I'm holding it in my hand!"

So yes, we don't celebrate it.

Anyway, each year I send an SMS to all my girlfriends with a "Greetings on your day, Witch!", which I always get answered with laugher or a "Greetings to you too, Witch!". Today, has not been any different. I enjoyed sending the messages and then picking e-Cards on Hallmark for my friends and sending them all over the globe.

There are other things I love of Halloween, and particularly about the fantastic trio of these three days: Halloween, All Saints' Day (Samhaim) and the Day of the Dead. These days, probably due to my predisposition, I tend to be far more creative. The best of my poetry comes to me in these days, or around these days (though I forcefully defend my "title" as a prose writer, which I am, for I'm a very poor poetry writer, truth to be told), and so the plots for my stories, the solutions to knotted up stories and scenes just flow to me. They all, though, have kind of a "gothic" feeling to them, and they are stronger at night, but yet they make me feel better.

Today I feel like reading Ann Radcliffe... which can't be found in this Gaia forgotten land. Hn, and then people at my favotire bookstore ask why I don't buy more: because I can't find any other decent book to buy! I pretty much sniff up every good book I see, and some not so good, but please, please, I'd be happy to buy more if you'd just listen to me and bring the books I want to buy! And keep the influx of French books coming!

I tell you, Amazon.com is their death. There I find many of the books I like...

Change of Thought by Association. I dream with the day my favorite bookstore, which I visit at least once a week, will be in Hungary. With the thesis going on that day seems so close! I'm really, really burning for going there and live there... probably with no Halloween, even if the feeling and the flood of inspiration keeps coming to me, and whispering the most interesting stories and the words for verses filled with gloom.