Oh, That the Sun Might Rise Again

I have always had a thing for Halloween. And, we're talking for what has become a whole host of reasons over the years. As a very young American expatriate, my earliest memories of America were practically more myth than reality, and Halloween might as well go ahead and be added to that mix. I first went trick-or-treating in Paris, France, with friends from A.S.P., otherwise known as the American School of Paris. A lovely place, really, and a great place to get a first-rate elementary education. If I have half a brain, I owe a great deal of it to A.S.P. and its progressive curriculum.

I am not a big holiday guy when it comes right down to it. As cynical as I am, it is more than a little difficult for me to admit to myself that the holidays are little more than an excuse for people to spend money and propagate some form of diluted tradition all in the eventual name of commerce.

Fuck that.

But, still, I have always enjoyed Halloween.

I dug John Carpenter's movie (still do), have loved the pagan implications, have enjoyed any holiday that is centered around deception and masking who it is we really are. It's rudimentary and juvenile, but it still works for me.

But if we flash-forward to now, to me being forty motherfucking years old, to me being divorced, a father of two, a man who is tormented by demons (too much?) then maybe Halloween takes on a new, less important significance.

Maybe All Hallows Day is little more than a chance to make my kids smile.

Hell, you know what? That's more than enough.

We have battles to fight in this life. We have hills to climb and wars to wage. And most importantly, we have an obligation to take our middle finger and wave it directly in the face of anyone who dares cross our path.

But back to Halloween, back to this Halloween.

This Halloween was a bittersweet one. It has been a year since I left my ex-wife, and it has been a tough year by all accounts. So much pain for so many people, and at the core of it all the decisions I have been a party to, I have been a prime motivator in executing.

So we have the kids this weekend and they are hungry for candy.

It is my plan to drag them over to the semi-affluent neighborhood a few streets over and badger folks for candy.

But it all comes unglued when I realize just who these people actually are.

America has a very ugly underbelly.

We are a nation of repressed humans, needing to find a berth in which to land our anxieties and our fears. This neighborhood, this enclave of white, this enclave of white bread America with their dull, pasty skinned children, with their Hummers, and Land Rovers, with their stucco mansions and manicured lawns and bay windows and custom mailboxes and luxurious earrings and their silent rapes and their late night abuses and their substances and their suicide and their race rage and their entitlement, rampant, a disease, a blight, a stain on who it is we actually strive to be.

where is the heart of this country? Who is it we wish to be? Who is it we have presented ourselves to be in the morass of contemporary life?

In line at the grocery store, righteous and indignant, boutique honey and artisanal breads, olive bar tubs and organic milks, smug self-satisfaction and all the lot... it is all too much to bear.

There is no struggle save this struggle, and at the heart of it is this small family, desperate to tread water, to find a solution to this, and then this, and then this...

And all the while, our heads held high, our battles being fought moment by moment, and our vitriol being refined to an exponential degree...

Make no mistake.

I hate you all.

As I lead my children through your streets, ashamed of who I've become, and you, clad in your polo shirts, to the one, collar upturned, hair so elaborately gelled, wife so carefully chosen to enhance your illusion of control...

Know that I am here to tear it all down.

That, and eat your candy.

Oh yeah, and shit on your lawn.

What a dream,

What a life,

What a world to which we are forced to adapt.

And still, I wouldn't stop for a single second because it's still, in all its agony, in all its confusion, in all my rage, all my sadness, all my guilt, all my doubts...

Despite it all, I am still better than you.

Trick-or-treat.

Lighter please...