The True Meaning of Halloween

This doesn't in any way replace a "real" post, and I've been meaning to get on here and ask your help in deciding which presidential candidate I should dislike the least, but I found this video and it was too delightful to pass up. (Even if it's not your cup of tea, it's worth watching to the end.)


In The Know: Has Halloween Become Overcommercialized?

We should do it for the children.

Red Tagged

I dunno—I just wanted a clever name for the post.

Frodo over at Mystery Cycles tagged me, and so I shall, sheeplike, follow. More people should do this kind of thing: even though it wastes just as much time and effort as an original post, it feels much easier.

Here are the rules:
1.Post the rules on your blog
2.Write 6 random things about yourself
3.Tag 6 people at the end of your post
4.If you are tagged, just do it, and pass the tag along!

1. I am, and have constantly been for most of my life, obsessed with finding "wilderness"—that is, areas untouched by man. I am coming to realize that I'm really looking for areas only lightly touched by man; in a totally wild area I'd probably be dead within a week. But I've always been saddened to think that there are no unmapped areas in our world, and few places man has not set his foot. I think this is part of why I've always loved fog: not only does it bespeak of the foul weather and cold temperatures I love, but also lends the world an air of mystery, of hidden-ness, the sense that there is much more out there than the normal pathways you tread. Even in my own house, the fog makes me feel isolated, independent, and somehow more alive.
   
   And that's at least a large part of my hiking obsession as well: the quest to find places where we have not marred the landscape beyond a simple trail. That there are so few of these areas left is a constant sorrow to me. I was reminded of this again when I came across a passage in John McPhee's Coming into the Country, about his collection of essays on Alaska. On meeting a grizzly in the woods, he says this:
   

   What mattered was not so much the bear himself as what the bear implied. He was the predominant thing in that country, and for him to be in it at all meant that there had to be more country like it in every direction and more of the same kind of country all around. He implied a world.

   
   That's at least part of what draws my heart northward. Here in Southern California, there just do not exist such places. On a narrow ridge of arid mountain, surrounded by city on all sides, it feels like we exist on an island of nature amidst urban seas, and their effluvia pollutes us. I thank God I live on that island rather than down in the muck, but still...


2. It strikes me that point Number 1 up there is self-serving, self-pitying, annoyingly mannered, and pointlessly baroque. That's how most of my writing strikes me, which is perhaps why I have such trouble with it. I cannot for the life of me figure out why something I profess to want to do, that I feel called to do, that has taken up so much of my breathing and thinking and desiring for so long, is something I cannot make myself do without threats and desperation. How can that be? Have I just convinced myself that I "should" be a writer, to the point that I can't let go of it? Is there any other pursuit that one must chain oneself to to get it done? Am I kidding myself?
   
   Rose is a gorgeous singer, and this semester at school she's taking a voice class. She loves going to class; she loves the practice; she loves the performances (or will do, when they come up next month). She doesn't claim to want to be a singer but constantly find other ways to amuse herself instead of practicing; she doesn't whine about how she wants to be professional singer but then refuse to actually pursue singing; she doesn't say that she's called to sing and then make constant excuses for doing anything but sing, or claim her job is "too hard" to leave her any time for singing.
   
   Something's not right here.


3. I appreciate climate control as much as the next person, but my office is so cold that I'm wearing a jacket at the moment and I keep making typing mistakes because I'm shivering and my fingers feel numb. Really, people—let the natural temperature have precedence once in a while, or at least TURN DOWN THE BLASTED AIR CONDITIONING.


4. As life continues I feel slightly more able at manual tasks that are required of me (i.e.: wielding a chainsaw, building a block wall, changing oil in the car), yet I'm constantly reminded of (a) how few things that really constitutes; (b) the many, many tasks that I cannot figure out (i.e.: fixing my leaking faucet, building stairs to my currently unusable back porch, locating my now-buried water main); and (c) how even those things I have learned I cannot reliably repeat because I don't do them often enough. I want to be a grown-up.


5. I'm putting way too much thought into coming up with random thoughts, which kind of describes much of my approach to life. I cannot recall what show it was on, but in one sitcom a character is being derided for not being spontaneous. His response was along the lines of, "I like spontaneity, as long as it's controlled and planned out ahead of time." That's me, and that makes me sad.


6. I love the wind: the feeling of air rushing along my skin and ruffling my clothes, the sound of it roaring through the trees, the squall and scatter it causes on the ground. But nowadays that love it tainted with a constant fear of wildfire, and I find myself scanning the mountains every time I walk to or from class, looking for a line of smoke and wondering if we're going to get evacuated again. That's life in the West these days, I suppose.

I hesitate to post this at all—it seems my "random" thoughts today are taken up with the angry. This is the most complain-y thing I've put up for a long time, and it's just a kind of "blah" cycle, or an attack, or something. I was actually feeling pretty good this morning... Thanks a heap for tagging me and bringing up these painful thoughts, Frodo!

Oh—the people to whom I'm passing on this cursed electronic virus called tagging:

Slater
My Sis
Matt the Fox
Corrina
The Esteemed Mrs. Miller
Katie ('cause the last time she wrote was the last time I tagged her...)

I'm going to go teach. *grump*