Halloween
I feel like so much of my time, writing or otherwise, is spent looking towards the past. It may not be the healthiest way to be, but I am here to do it once again.
I stumbled across a blog of nostalgic Halloween pictures from decades ago. Just seeing the pictures stirs within me the feelings I had as a child about the holiday. In my brain I see images of those days gone by. I feel emotions I can't even quite put words to as i recall those times.
It felt as if there was something special about that time of year for as long as I can remember. I may have already recounted this on this very journal before, but when one gets older they tend to repeat themselves.
The leaves on the ground. The slow death and decay of plant life. The shorter days. Darkness falling early. The smell in the air. The cool nights. It all comes back to me as I remember the old neighborhood. The excitement I would feel as the calendar passed into October and my mother dug out the black garbage bag from the front hall closet that was filled with the cardboard cutout Halloween decorations.
I would spend an entire afternoon after I got home from school painstakingly arranging the decorations in the three big picture windows in the living room. (Surely by October 31st half of them would have fallen and been retaped when the windows got cold or wet with moisture).
In later years with the advent of more innovative technologies my mother would get me things like fake cobwebs. I would also dig out old white sheets and make ghosts to hang on the front railings. Eventually, after a remodel of the living room we had all this old paneling in the garage my dad helped me cut tombstones out of, and eventually a coffin top as if one was bursting out of the ground. We were the first on the block to have such decorations. (Unfortunately, half of them were stolen that year and I tasted some of the true cruelty of the world).
As the days ticked on it felt as if the eerie mystery in the air only got heavier approaching the end of the month. Where as so many feel listless and glum as the days grow shorter, I've always feel empowered. I'm not sure if this is some flaw in my nature but I see a beauty to autumn. With the obvious things like the changing of the leaves but with the unseen things. There is an electricity of sorts in the air.
Other little joys were catching all the Halloween specials on television. Charlie Brown of course being the pinnacle. I recall a Garfield special once too. As I got older a handful of TV shows had Halloween specials. Roseanne comes to mind as the first that really opened my eyes to the potential of Halloween decorating. That there were people out there, like me, who adored the holiday.
My neighborhood friends and I would stay out late hanging on our front porches or walking around a lot talking about costumes and ghosts. Scaring each other about the abandoned house on the next block. All kinds of silly stuff kids do and find such wonder in.
I do recall a feeling of disappointment as I got to be "too old" for trick-or-treating. It seemed to me that at the time I was in junior high Halloween really started to become a holiday for little kids. I remember an adult scoffing at my age when I went out for my last year which was either 8th grade of possibly freshmen year of high school.
But, I enjoyed staying home and giving out candy too. I would have the haunted house audio cassette playing out the window. With the cobwebs and ghosts floating around the porch. When the trick-or-treaters dwindled I'd be in the kitchen watching an edited version of Halloween on channel 32 on the little 12" TV we had on the counter.
I remember the disappointment I felt that the day would soon be over.
It wasn't until I was 20 that there was a sort of resurgence of my Halloween creativity. It was 1995, the year that 'Batman Forever' came out and the group of friends I hung out with were planning a big party. So I had this little Chinese woman at a dry cleaners in Orland help sew me a green jumpsuit so I could be the Riddler. When I was 21, I started going to bars who had their own costume contests.
Eventually, when I saw what other folks would put together and I had my first Halloween in Boystown, it raised the bar on the kind of costumes I would make. That first time in Boystown, which was probably around 1998 was one of the most amazing Halloween's I had. I remember the streets being flooded with people. So much so that traffic could barely get through. A group of guys were dressed up like beauty school dropouts from 'Grease'.
It wasn't like Boystown is now, saturated with families and strollers with kid-oriented B.S. It was just hundreds of gay men in the most ridiculous costumes. My first real memory of that night is a Santa Clause with a "slave" on a leash. We were in Sidetrack and it was still early. But, back then people didn't really stay in the bars. Everyone was out on the street.
In the years since when I moved into Boystown I finally had the big Halloween parties we always talked about when we were kids. Each year the decorations became more elaborate. I've had all kinds of ideas for themes and such, and somehow made so many of them happen.
But even still, I have on recent years spent many October nights when I wasn't crazed with party planning wandering the city neighborhoods and looking at decorations. Seeing jack-o-lanterns in windows and feeling the very feeling I am experiencing right now. That nostalgia for the wonder of another time and place.
Last year I left Chicago and celebrated Halloween in New Orleans. My favorite holiday and my favorite city did not disappoint. The people of New Orleans seem to share a lot in common with my own attitude and no less in their celebration of the holiday. The decorations on so many of the balconies were so ostentatious. Halloween night, though disrupted by a minor rain storm turned out to be like the amazing nights of old.
Elaborate and simple costumes. So many people who shared my same passion. If I could go again this year I would. But, I fear I will not be able to afford to do so. And thusly, may be left feeling an emptiness and disappointment with being stuck here in the Chicago of the present. Not the Chicago of years ago, or the burbs of childhood. Nor the spirited streets of the French Quarter.
I wish I could dig deeper and understand these feelings. Why does this day bring me such joy. Why is it even in June I can sit here and think about it and feel such excitement.
I stumbled across a blog of nostalgic Halloween pictures from decades ago. Just seeing the pictures stirs within me the feelings I had as a child about the holiday. In my brain I see images of those days gone by. I feel emotions I can't even quite put words to as i recall those times.
It felt as if there was something special about that time of year for as long as I can remember. I may have already recounted this on this very journal before, but when one gets older they tend to repeat themselves.
The leaves on the ground. The slow death and decay of plant life. The shorter days. Darkness falling early. The smell in the air. The cool nights. It all comes back to me as I remember the old neighborhood. The excitement I would feel as the calendar passed into October and my mother dug out the black garbage bag from the front hall closet that was filled with the cardboard cutout Halloween decorations.
I would spend an entire afternoon after I got home from school painstakingly arranging the decorations in the three big picture windows in the living room. (Surely by October 31st half of them would have fallen and been retaped when the windows got cold or wet with moisture).
In later years with the advent of more innovative technologies my mother would get me things like fake cobwebs. I would also dig out old white sheets and make ghosts to hang on the front railings. Eventually, after a remodel of the living room we had all this old paneling in the garage my dad helped me cut tombstones out of, and eventually a coffin top as if one was bursting out of the ground. We were the first on the block to have such decorations. (Unfortunately, half of them were stolen that year and I tasted some of the true cruelty of the world).
As the days ticked on it felt as if the eerie mystery in the air only got heavier approaching the end of the month. Where as so many feel listless and glum as the days grow shorter, I've always feel empowered. I'm not sure if this is some flaw in my nature but I see a beauty to autumn. With the obvious things like the changing of the leaves but with the unseen things. There is an electricity of sorts in the air.
Other little joys were catching all the Halloween specials on television. Charlie Brown of course being the pinnacle. I recall a Garfield special once too. As I got older a handful of TV shows had Halloween specials. Roseanne comes to mind as the first that really opened my eyes to the potential of Halloween decorating. That there were people out there, like me, who adored the holiday.
My neighborhood friends and I would stay out late hanging on our front porches or walking around a lot talking about costumes and ghosts. Scaring each other about the abandoned house on the next block. All kinds of silly stuff kids do and find such wonder in.
I do recall a feeling of disappointment as I got to be "too old" for trick-or-treating. It seemed to me that at the time I was in junior high Halloween really started to become a holiday for little kids. I remember an adult scoffing at my age when I went out for my last year which was either 8th grade of possibly freshmen year of high school.
But, I enjoyed staying home and giving out candy too. I would have the haunted house audio cassette playing out the window. With the cobwebs and ghosts floating around the porch. When the trick-or-treaters dwindled I'd be in the kitchen watching an edited version of Halloween on channel 32 on the little 12" TV we had on the counter.
I remember the disappointment I felt that the day would soon be over.
It wasn't until I was 20 that there was a sort of resurgence of my Halloween creativity. It was 1995, the year that 'Batman Forever' came out and the group of friends I hung out with were planning a big party. So I had this little Chinese woman at a dry cleaners in Orland help sew me a green jumpsuit so I could be the Riddler. When I was 21, I started going to bars who had their own costume contests.
Eventually, when I saw what other folks would put together and I had my first Halloween in Boystown, it raised the bar on the kind of costumes I would make. That first time in Boystown, which was probably around 1998 was one of the most amazing Halloween's I had. I remember the streets being flooded with people. So much so that traffic could barely get through. A group of guys were dressed up like beauty school dropouts from 'Grease'.
It wasn't like Boystown is now, saturated with families and strollers with kid-oriented B.S. It was just hundreds of gay men in the most ridiculous costumes. My first real memory of that night is a Santa Clause with a "slave" on a leash. We were in Sidetrack and it was still early. But, back then people didn't really stay in the bars. Everyone was out on the street.
In the years since when I moved into Boystown I finally had the big Halloween parties we always talked about when we were kids. Each year the decorations became more elaborate. I've had all kinds of ideas for themes and such, and somehow made so many of them happen.
But even still, I have on recent years spent many October nights when I wasn't crazed with party planning wandering the city neighborhoods and looking at decorations. Seeing jack-o-lanterns in windows and feeling the very feeling I am experiencing right now. That nostalgia for the wonder of another time and place.
Last year I left Chicago and celebrated Halloween in New Orleans. My favorite holiday and my favorite city did not disappoint. The people of New Orleans seem to share a lot in common with my own attitude and no less in their celebration of the holiday. The decorations on so many of the balconies were so ostentatious. Halloween night, though disrupted by a minor rain storm turned out to be like the amazing nights of old.
Elaborate and simple costumes. So many people who shared my same passion. If I could go again this year I would. But, I fear I will not be able to afford to do so. And thusly, may be left feeling an emptiness and disappointment with being stuck here in the Chicago of the present. Not the Chicago of years ago, or the burbs of childhood. Nor the spirited streets of the French Quarter.
I wish I could dig deeper and understand these feelings. Why does this day bring me such joy. Why is it even in June I can sit here and think about it and feel such excitement.