Halloween fast approaches, and that means that everyone’s tastes get, if only briefly, a bit more macabre. While I by no means restrict my enjoyment of the dark and the gloomy to this single month, I always welcome October with open arms, because for that all-too-brief period, the world as a whole joins me in my ghoulish revelry. I love horror, even if I’m not particularly gifted at writing it. I’m something of a snob where it’s concerned, and draw a very clear line between the good and bad within the genre. Personally, I like horror that unsettles me, stories that cause me, afterwards, to move past a shadowy doorway just a bit faster, or take that glance behind me even when I know I’m alone. Much of the horror that I like operates on a principle that Stephen King describes in his nonfiction book, Danse Macabre. King claims that the most terrifying image is the closed door, because the human imagination creates a thousand unspeakable horrors lurking just on the other side, most of which are more terrible than whatever is actually there. The best fear lies in not knowing, in the potential for, quite literally, any monstrosity imaginable, and good horror preys upon this, forcing its audience to wait in dread anticipation of what will happen next. This idea of dread anticipation fits nicely into the origins of the holiday. The Druidic festival of Samhain (read: SAH-win) marked the start of the “dark” half of the calendar; that is, the period from late fall to early spring when greenery (and therefore food) was scarce. The festival was marked with eating, drinking, and dancing in the light of massive bonfires, a way of celebrating the end of another successful harvest season while simultaneously getting in a last hurrah, just in case winter proved fatal. It was also considered the time where the boundaries between the human and mystical realms were at their thinnest, hence why we associate October with ghosts and goblins. Thus the approaching dark marked by Samhain is both natural and supernatural, at once the oncoming cold of winter and the potential menace of the otherworldly, both the threat of the unquiet dead and the knowledge that nature might cause you to join their ranks. If you want to observe the season, I have recommendations in droves. I’ve thrown together a Goodreads shelf of suggested readings, and dug out and updated the “horror movie curriculum” I made for a friend back in college. Browse them both, and feel free to suggest any additions to either. Happy Halloween!
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Though it seems to have abated (at least for the time being), I was very glad to see that October started with several straight days of damp, grey skies. There’s no better weather than a nice autumn rain. Summer rains aren’t the same; they tend to sweep in out of nowhere, bringing torrential rain for short windows of time, or else they manifest as black and looming thunderstorms. An autumn rain endures. It can last for days. Even if the rain isn’t falling every moment, the sky is a uniform grey and the air is thick with damp. If you’re lucky, there’s even a light fog every now and then.
I like the rain. I do some of my best writing when it’s overcast and wet. My desk is nicely situated next to a window that overlooks the small courtyard behind my building. On rainy days, I’m often found at that desk, window open, wrapped in a sweater, listening to the sound of the raindrops as I sip my tea and type merrily away. I can’t really explain why it tends to happen that way; it’s not as if the rain keeps me inside or prevents me from doing other activities. Last autumn it was my ritual to go for walks during dark, rainy nights. There’s a wonderful pub up the street from where I live, dimly-lit with a big, old wooden bar and wall hangings that would make the Addams Family proud. When a night started to look particularly dark and damp, I’d grab whatever I was reading at the moment, take up my umbrella, and make the five-minute trek up the rainy hill, past the big old Victorian houses, and into the pub, where I’d spend hours in the semi-darkness with my book and a few beers. Those were always nice, relaxing evenings. Hopefully October will afford me plenty of opportunities to have those evenings again. |
AuthorWriter, professor, occasional ruminator Archives
October 2018
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