You are currently browsing the daily archive for October 31st, 2008.
I seriously love Stephen King.
The Stand introduced me to some basic ideas that I’ve flirted with, dated for a while, married, and had a couple of kids with — a broadly supernatural world beyond question, full of fear and demons and natural gods; fantasy set in places other than some ersatz Medieval France; apocalypticism as beginning as well as end; and a notion of religion akin to the way it was understood thousands of years ago — as a bulwark against darkness instead of a way to be a peace and be loving (neither of which I dispute as good things, but neither of which I find entirely applicable to my experience of God).
My work has been full of those themes. I wish I could post a copy of “The Ways of Things” to show you what I’m talking about. I’ve striven to perfect the art of the impenetrable supernatural that exists for its own sake and not for ours, that has its own concerns and its own mysteries which are, quite frankly, not our business. I point to The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and “The Langoliers”, both of whom featured such strange and difficult creatures. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, in particular, interests me in that regard, with the philosophical confrontation between Tom Gordon himself and the so-called God of the Lost
I guess I am, like CS Lewis, a converted pagan, but those pagan attitudes still hang around sometimes. I read with fascination about old Roman sacrificial rites, about being drenched with a bulls blood and entrails, and in my mind Coyote lords over the desert. I don’t believe in them like I believe in Adonai, no, but I tend to think of the angels in the same way. I read Isaiah and watch them, those flaming ministers, who are so other, so far away, that we can have nothing to do with each other, and I wonder — do they see me the same way?
One thing about getting older is, holidays fluctuate with meaning, significance. Birthdays lose their luster, the profound sense of worth and….ripeness, I suppose. Now, barring serious coordination between you and your friends, who most likely have jobs and/or school to manage, birthdays are just another day. Halloween loses its true worth once you hit thirteen (varying from state to state I suppose), and is turned into just another day. Sure there are Halloween parties to attend but, walking ten blocks in search of free candy hitting each house on the way is ten times more awesome than any ol’ party, costumed or otherwise. I’m six years old, you mean to tell me, that I can just go up to people’s doors, say ‘trick or treat’ and they give me free candy? That’s amazing.
Even more amazing, going through college, was (and is) all the girls our age who use Halloween night as an excuse, a very, thinly veiled excuse, to dress up as whores and playboy bunnies. It’s not like, a small, isolated thing. It’s like some damn epidemic. As if sixty-percent of the female student body get together and make a pact to dress up as trashy as they can short of getting arrested for indecent exposure. It’s something else, and it’s kind of sad. I wonder if they would dress up like that every other day of the year were they able to get away with it. It’s probably a serious lack of creativity coupled with the ever present female insecurity and competition with other females (even in those things most absurd), et cetera et cetera.
Throughout college the few Halloween parties I did go to were mediocre or bad experiences until my third year in school where I decided to skip the trouble all together. You’d think parties in costumes would be more fun than parties without, but somehow, people manage to screw it up.
Christmas is much the same story, though while the significance has shifted, rather than diminished. As I matured, even as an adolescent and a teenager, and my faith grew, I grew in prayer and focus on Christ more during this time of year and not so much whether or not my folks got me what I asked for. As an adult, it only gets more true. A lot of the Christmas magic is gone, I hate to say. There is this very raw sense of love and fulfillment and electricity in the air when I was younger that seems to diminish the older I get. And it doesn’t have anything to do with the toys I got, because I quickly got over all that stuff over time. It’s mostly another day I get to spend at home with my folks, and thank god my mom is the amazing decorator she is; she brings the house to life every year. I turn to the reason for the season, the birth of Jesus, and make that my focus, and yet, Christmas almost, almost feels like another day. It’s frustrating, because I ask myself what happened? Did I just get old? Why does that mean the magic and sense wonder of things is diminished?
I don’t mind getting a job and paying bills and playing the dating game (no fun, by the way), but why does the world become less remarkable with each passing year?
God is the only constant in my life. Sometimes I wish that wasn’t the case.
One love.
