(no subject)
Happy October. I used to count off the days till Halloween the way some kids count to Christmas. The opportunities to dress up, paint my face, run around in the dark playing pretend...it was like being in a play, only without all the hard work.
Then there were the shadows and horror stories and folktales, and the books of Lore that I'd get out of the library. You know the kind of thing. Childrens' writers throw together books of folkloric traditions and pass them off as being "said to have really happened", urban-legend-like. One book of English Witch Traditions is specially prominent in my mind because of the illustrations. The author talked about how "witches"* would cast spells on their victims by sticking pins in dolls... or in animal body parts. On the opposing page was a photo of a large red beef heart, stuck full of iron nails.
I was creeped out, all right, but it was the brand of creeped-out that I liked. There were plenty of books on ghosts and monsters at the library, and I always had a bunch around the house. (So what's changed?)
Earlier today, I was remembering the speech at Readercon where China Mieville talked about his childhood taste in books: "My sister was into the 'Little House on the Prairie' books, and I tried those, and they were all right, but they just had a distinct--" [waves hands] "--lack of monsters."
At any rate, I'm declaring this Halloween Month, because Halloween doesn't go on long enough to suit me. Under the cut, a sonnet by that much-neglected poet, H. P. Lovecraft.
Sonnet XIV. Star-Winds
It is a certain hour of twilight glooms,
Mostly in autumn, when the star-wind pours
Down hilltop streets, deserted out-of-doors,
But shewing early lamplight from snug rooms.
The dead leaves rush in strange, fantastic twists,
And chimney-smoke whirls round with alien grace,
Heeding geometries of outer space,
While Fomalhaut peers in through southward mists.
This is the hour when moonstruck poets know
What fungi sprout in Yuggoth, and what scents
And tints of flowers fill Nithon's continents,
Such as in no poor earthly garden blow.
Yet for each dream these winds to us convey,
A dozen more of ours they sweep away!
*Not the Wiccan kind of witches. Or the innocent-victim-of-paranoid-neighbors brand. The cackling, pointy-hat brand of witches, who for the purpose of the book, were deemed to have been real. Nowadays, I've read so much made-up stuff about "witch history" that I would like to go find the author and deck him. (Then we can all go to Salem and set fire to the Witch Dungeon.) However, at the time it was all good fun.