WITCHERY

Thursday night, I dreamt of snow. There was a bunch of other things in that dream that I only remember in a hazy way, but the snowing part I remember clearly. Some time early last week, someone said something about living in Kansas City for at least ten years now and not remembering that it snows in October sometimes. I told that person that it does because I have pictures of my Halloween decorations covered in snow. Yesterday Facebook wanted to share a memory of four years ago where I took a short video of snow falling from the sky. Sometimes it snows in October. I dreamt of snow on Thursday and it snowed on Sunday.

Clearly, I am a witch.

I was thinking of witches and spells while I was in Cape Cod. It’s hard not to considering all the history surrounding that area and witch hunts where in one year fourteen women were hanged for witchcraft. Could you imagine giving someone the death penalty for witch craft today? Can you imagine how completely ridiculous that sounds? Part of me believes the human race has evolved beyond that, but while I was taking pictures of the Founding Fathers National Monument, a woman popped up out of nowhere talking about the need to take this country back to the government of our Founding Fathers, back to a time when she didn’t have the right to vote or have her own bank account.

We are prone to believing ridiculous things.

I was reading some thing recently, it was probably a random meme, about how you shouldn’t dismiss your woo. “Woo” referred to the mystical lala crap that I not only dismiss, but completely ignore. I have many friends who thoroughly embrace woo. They follow the complicated version of star signs where you don’t just know your astrological sign for the month you were born, but the moon phase at the time of their births. Some of them not only know this about themselves, but they know it about others and how to use all of this to understand their relationships. I cannot hold any of that information in my brain. I seriously have to look up my star sign whenever I think to ironically read my horoscope. Even that feels complicated because I’m some sort of Acquires Capricorn blend because January 20th is more than an Inauguration Day. I’m more woo adjacent. Like I’m the one you text when you’re worried about mercury poisoning from your pot because I can tell you if mercury forms a bond with the THC compound. It can because THC is a thiol compound which is also why it smells very much like a skunk. Skunk stink is also a thiol compound.

Organic chemistry is my witchcraft.

I’m just the type of personality that believes there is a scientific explanation for everything. Once someone asked me if ghosts were real. The person didn’t ask me if I thought ghosts were real. They wanted to know if ghosts were real, which felt like a loaded question. Like the person was testing my scientific credibility. I told this person what I tell everybody who asks me about souls and spirits. The Law of Conservation of Energy states that energy can neither be created or destroyed, only converted to another form of energy. Humans contain energy. Sometimes that energy stays close and does weird shit like make the lights flicker and sometimes it goes back into the planet, helping trees grow tall and strong. It goes somewhere and scientists are still working on figuring out the wheres and whys. It is of yet to be explained.

Sort of like this rambling post.

Years ago, while on a trip to Boston, Michael and I took a day trip up to Salem. Salem is pretty much what you’d expect it be. There’s historic witch houses and people walking around in costumes depicting the 1600s. Every other shop is a spells and crystals shop. It feels more like Silver Dollar City without the rides than it does historic despite it being an early European settlement. Any way, we spent the hottest day of a Massachusetts summer there, exploring the town on Bird scooters. I found a lovely journal in one of the shops that reads “Book of Spells” on the cover. I bought it thinking that I would write down ridiculous spell components, but I only wrote one or two before the journal was abandoned along with a stack of other abandoned journals. That’s a Chris thing, to have stacks of journals with only a few pages of written things in them. Another bit of energy I must have absorbed because now I have a similar stack. My book of spells was abandoned because I couldn’t really think of any spells I’d like to cast. I mean really. How many spells does one need to live a happy life? Maybe I should start writing spells for living a content life. Or maybe I should just devote this journal to revisiting organic compounds. As of right now though, that journal’s fate is still yet to be determined or explained.

Like ghosts.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

The other day, Michael and I stopped by one of our favorite local grocery stores that happened to have large bins of pumpkins out front, all claiming to be from a local farm. We call the store the Fancy Hen House because it’s on the ritzy side of Kansas and is nicer that other Hen House’s. We usually end up here when we’re scrounging up Saturday night’s dinner fixings because it’s fancy, but not fancy/pricey like Whole Foods. I said out loud as I was walking by the first bin of pumpkins “It’s too early to buy a pumpkin.” Then I picked out three small white pumpkins because I wanted ghosts. There were a few very very large pumpkins right by the entrance. I looked down at one and realized that they were pretty cheap for that size of a pumpkin. I looked up at Michael and described an idea of using one of these giant pumpkins as a head for a skeleton body. Michael said that I did not have the right skeleton pieces to do this. So then we argued for a few minutes about what skeleton I needed. I thought I had convinced him that we needed to buy that pumpkin, but then he said “If you can pick it up, you can buy it.”

I did not buy that pumpkin.

Yet.

A few weeks ago, I was thinking about October and how maybe I just wouldn’t decorate this year. I’m busy. If I put it all out, I have to take it all down and that thought made me tired. Micheal and I were out running errands while I was thinking these things and one errand was to stop at Lowes for an air filter. As we walked up to the front doors, Michael asked me where could I go inside that would be the most distracting. I told him “Halloween!” and then he left me there while he hunted down the right filter. When he found me, I’d left Halloween and was wandering the garden section holding a mum. He said “What happened?” I shrugged and said “There’s not much over there to inspire me.” So I thought I’d just leave it this year.

I have been in robot mode since the beginning of September. My head is down and focused on the tasks at hand, getting one task completed and moving on to the next. I’ve taken little time to look up and around. You may have noticed this some with the lack luster photos I’ve been posting lately. One morning this week, the sunrise with the clouds was spectacular. I zipped past my friend Erica on my way to work and she texted me to ask if I’d taken pictures of the sky that morning. She’d been out trying to find a good shot of the sky when I’d passed by on Valerie. I had to tell her that I didn’t stop to take any pictures and I felt disappointed in myself. People keep asking me how the art showing is going and I just shrug and say “okay.” Because nothing is really happening. Pictures are up, but I’m not standing around the Starbucks watching and listening to peoples’ comments or reactions to the work. Instead of being excited about the reception next week, I’m fretting about all the little details I need to take care of before then. I’m leaving little space for feelings other than numbness.

Seeing all of those pumpkin bins at the grocery store created a shift. Then I remembered that I’d spent hours last year glueing googly eyes all over my Halloween wreath and I felt a little bit of joy as I thought about that wreath. I have to put that out at least. Oh! There’s also Suzanne. She’s got to come out of her box in the basement. Michael hates Suzanne, which makes me cackle. Tuesday evening, I drew faces on my little white pumpkins while Michael told me about his day. Wednesday evening, Michael came home with a life size posable skeleton that he presented to me as a gift. I named her Jane and spent the rest of the evening posing her. She sat on the couch and played a game of Two Dots before moving to the desk to start on a writing project. Yesterday, she waited in Michael’s closet for him to come home from work. “What the fuck, lady! What the fuck!?!” was his hello for Jane and then he started having regrets about bringing her home. I think we’re going to be the best of friends.

It feels nice to be reminded to leave some space for a bit of playfulness. It feels nice to just lift my head up and expand my view beyond my current tunnel. And it’s not hard to carve out space for any of that, but it is easy to forget to do so. If I get home before Michael today, I’m putting Jane in the washing machine and making him start the first load of laundry.

RESTLESS

I think I'll name him Frank

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I went to bed last night at my usual bedtime only to lay in my bed tossing and turning for two and half hours. I don’t know what was going on, but all the voices in my head were talking over each other. I had discussions with myself about NaNoWriMo and what story to write. Then I thought I should just work on something I had already started a while back. I told some parts of that story to myself as I flipped over onto my right side. Then I thought about this up coming alumni trip I’m making to my undergrad this weekend. I started to imagine who I might run into this weekend and the conversations we’d have. What if I run into someone who doesn’t know Chris is dead and they ask me where he is this weekend? I played out a few answers before settling on “oh, he was busy and couldn’t make this trip with me.”

“What’s he busy doing? Oh…you know…stuff…like being dead.”

I flipped over to my left side and started to worry about not being able to fall asleep. I made a mental note to ask Michael (again) to bring the chicken food in from the back of my car. Josephine came out from under the blanket on my right side and moved to the end of the bed. She flopped down with a heavy sigh only to get up a few minutes later and lay down at my left side. I wondered if I should pack a hair dryer. I looked at the clock and flipped over to my other side. Then I started getting mad because I had thought about getting up at five the next morning to study a chapter of Yoga Sutras and meditate. I closed my eyes tight and started talking myself through points of relaxation, starting with the forehead, but got distracted somewhere around my right elbow. The very last thought I had when I finally started to drift off was an image of my Dad on what was probably the second to the last time I visited him in the VA hospital. Dad was in a wheelchair lined up with all the other patients for Twinkie day. He didn’t want a Twinkie which is how I knew he was no longer the Dad I had known my whole life. He’d lost the ability to use words by this point and clutched my hand. I’m still not sure if he clutched my hand because he knew who I was or because he thought I was someone else, someone he’d lost some time ago.

My next door neighbor is a ghost hunter. He’s written a book and is working on a new documentary. I wonder when we chat across the backyard fence if he can sense the ghosts that float around me.

I know I conjured Dad. I had friends over for a pumpkin carving get-to-together and as Michael sliced the top of my pumpkin off for me, I was immediately transported to the den of the our family house. Dad would be sitting in his recliner with newspaper draped over his lap like a napkin. There would be a large pumpkin resting on this newspaper, the pumpkin tilted and turned so that Dad could see the face I had drawn onto it. Even now I can see myself as I lean on the back of his chair, looking over his shoulder. Dad would point with the tip of the knife at an eye or nose on the pumpkin. “You want me to cut out this part?” He’d ask. “No. no…that part.” I would answer while reaching over and pointing with an index finger. This is the scene that would take place every October until I moved out of the house. I know that I conjured Dad as I carved my pumpkin. What I don’t understand is why these conjurings always bring up the memories of Dad near his end. It happens with Chris too. I’ll see both of them as just the shell of the people they were. Faces slack, no recognition of who they are or who I am. Thank the Gods that the last time I saw J, he was wearing his Marine fatigues with a serious look in his eyes, but a shit eating grin on his face. Though he’d probably find it hilarious to visit me in the state of which he died. I admit to having nightmares of what that might have looked like, but that was ages ago.

Halloween is just a couple of days away. If you believe in ghosts and that a veil exists between the living and the dead, then you also know that veil is pretty thin right now. It is the best time to tell ghost stories. The spirits are restless. At least that’s the excuse I’m going to use for my chattery mind.

OUT OF CANDY

Alien

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I ate four caramel apples over the weekend. Really...it was more like three and a few bites of one. They had them in the cafeteria on Friday and I was super excited about it until I bit into a mushy brown apple. This made me real sad. I scrapped the caramel and peanuts off the outside and then threw my apple part away. Saturday night, we met the gang for pre-party drinks and then all headed over to a party in a fancy old three story house in a really historic Kansas City neighborhood. We all headed straight back to the kitchen (as one does at a party) and there, sitting on the kitchen island was a bowl full of caramel apples. I immediately picked one up and took a bite. It was a perfectly crisp and sweet apple. No mushy brownness. Bradley looked at me and started laughing. He said "look how happy you look with that caramel apple!" And I was happy. It was a great party, but the best thing about it was the caramel apples. I took two on our way out the door, ate one when we got home and the other for a pre-dinner dessert the next day. I have no regrets. Except for that first one.

The hosts of the party we went to had their whole house open (except the basement) and encouraged everyone to go on a tour. Michael and I picked out rooms on our way through the house. On the second floor, there's a room attached to an enclosed porch. It used to be the sleeping porch. They had filled this room with house plants. Michael and I chose this room with the attached room for the Cabbage. The third level held a bed and a small living room. There was a bathroom and small alcove that held a tiny stove like the one I had in the first apartment I shared with Amy and Chris. I declared that this room was mine and started planning out the room to hold a small office and yoga space. Then we went back down stairs to join the rest of our gang and came to our senses. There is no way ever that we need a house that size. Michael has a ten year plan that has us buying a new house in nine years. We will be fifty years old and should be considering downsizing, not upsizing. The new house will really be for income anyway, as we plan to rent my house and the new one while we travel around the country in a RV.

Something really interesting about the house we went to for the party is that it has only had three other owners before this couple purchased it. One of the owners hung himself in the basement. One of the owners had a book of all the house history and the whole story behind the hanging in the basement. Terry spent the evening running from room to room trying capture EVPs on his phone. As Michael and I were saying our goodbyes, Terry popped through basement door. I have no idea what he discovered down there or if had to get special permission, but I did hear someone else say "there's some weird shit happening down there." As you would expect with it being so close to Halloween and there was death in the basement and alcohol consumed and Terry. I spent the whole next day in my pajamas and mostly on the couch. Every time I got up to do something, I had to peel an animal off of me. It was just easier to do nothing. 

So today, even though it's two days later, I feel like an inflated parade float and thinking that I should have skipped a couple of meals if I was going to eat all the caramel apples. It is Halloween. I screamed three times while watching Stranger Things on the exercise bike in the gym. We will probably watch the most recent Walking Dead episode. I do not have any candy for trick-or-treaters. I am not too bothered by this because I have had maybe four trick-or-treaters the entire time I have lived  here. Also I have a wreath with a sign that already tells people I am out of candy. 

CREATING TRADITIONS

Pumpkins are carved

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I cannot carve a pumpkin without thinking of Dad. I know that I have told the story a thousand times about how Dad and I would carve a pumpkin together every year. It was such an ingrained tradition and we never carved anything fancy. This was all before pumpkin carving kits and Pinterest, back in the day when people carved their pumpkins with knives and risked slicing off digits. That's part of the fun. I did not buy us special pumpkin carving kits this year partly for this reason and partly because there are bits of carving kits of past hiding around in the back of a kitchen drawer. We didn't really ever use anything out of those kits but the scraper and even then a spoon turned out to (still) be the best tool for the job.

They got a head start on the Cabbage's pumpkin while I was folding a basket of laundry. So by the time I was elbow deep into my pumpkin, Michael was already carving away at the face the Cabbage had drawn on her pumpkin. I could hear them behind me as Michael sat at the dinning room table with the Cabbage peering over his shoulder, directing Michael's knife. Was it so long ago that this was me doing the exact same thing, peering over Dad's shoulder and directing his carving knife? I smiled as I continued scraping the inside of my pumpkin. One of the tricks of pumpkin carving that Dad taught me, was to not just thoroughly scrap the sides of the pumpkin but to also scrap the bottom of the pumpkin. This way you roll the guts into ball as you go and then all you have to do is dump the pumpkin upside and watch as all the goop falls out. It is a lot of scraping and you should expect a hand cramp somewhere in the middle of the whole process, but it is the cleanest, most efficient way to pull out the insides of a pumpkin. 

I paused to rest my cramping hand and rub my forehead with back of my sleeved arm. I looked over at Michael who was doing the finishing touches on the Cabbage's pumpkin. The Cabbage was now dancing around behind him, no longer directing or even really paying attention. I wondered if he got it, if understood what kind of memory he was building with her. He didn't have the same kind of childhood as I did. He's never talked about carving pumpkins or participating in the same kind of traditional holiday activities as I did. Sure, he went trick-or-treating, but I don't know if he's ever been to the kind of Halloween party where kids bob for apples and jump over broomsticks. Collinsville used to have a Halloween festival at the fair grounds. One activity was to toss a bunch of money into a hay bale and let a group of kids dig around in the hay collecting whatever coins they could find. This was how we learned that I am allergic to hay, but it was my favorite thing. We didn't do this every year, but every year Dad and I carved a pumpkin. Always. Even when I was old enough to do it on my own. 

Michael asked the Cabbage about next year's pumpkin, something about maybe getting a carving kit so she could carve the pumpkin on her own. She told him that she didn't want to carve the pumpkin on her own. The Cabbage told him that she wanted to help him carve the pumpkin like they did this time around. I wonder if she has taken the lead in setting a tradition. I wonder if Michael recognizes that. I wonder if he realizes that maybe one day when the Cabbage is much older, she's going to tell stories about how she and her dad used to carve a pumpkin together every year.