Halloween Die-ary #10
I was ten feet off the ground on an ancient ladder that was somehow
still rickety despite being aluminum, stringing orange lights along my roof line
with cheap plastic clips that were made for white gutters, not the black ones my
house has. The mosquitos were taking turns giving me blood tests. The
construction paper bats weren’t doing their jobs, I guess. Actually, we weren’t
decorating with bats this year, but live ones were circling over our heads as
we decorated the exterior of our house, like they do at every dusk at the Black
House (that’s why we have black gutters). Eventually, I finished without any
Clark Griswold-style mishaps, and we walked to the road and turned the
decorations on with an app on Lindsey’s phone. It was a glorious moment, the
most Halloween moment so far this year. Maybe the apex of the still nascent
season.
I haven’t been doing Halloween Die-ary entries as often as I
thought I would so far, documenting each of these minor moments. When I
launched the Die-ary in 2017, it was a parallel project to the main Halloween
Season, meant to be just a few lines a day. In 2018, I the Halloween Die-ary
took over as the center-ring content, with standalone Halloween Season entries only
appearing occasionally. Last year, I felt like I achieved the right balance
between Die-ary entry and OTIS Halloween Season article, between small
ruminations of the day and full-on essays of the season.
So I thought I had a template for the 2020 season. Instead,
it’s been yet another variation, with mostly full-on essays and only Die-ary
entries when the mood hits me. And even those Die-ary entries have been more
like topical essays than a record of the day itself.
I don’t know why. Certainly we’ve been doing Halloween.
Watching horror movies. Enjoying the cool weather. Decorating. Eating so much
seasonal candy I’ve shaved years of my life, like each sweet is a piece of the sugar
skull at the end of The Halloween Tree. Reading spooky stories. Treating
the seasonal aisles of stores like museum exhibits.
Still, I haven’t felt like sharing those moments every day.
Not for any reason. I just don’t think I developed the Doogie Howser-style rhythm
I need to do that. Maybe the Cape Cod trip shook it up a bit. Maybe the launch
of Cursed Objects. But there’s two things I refuse to attribute it to:
COVID and the election shenanigans. I can bury my head in a pumpkin with the
best of them.
I do miss talking about the daily minor pleasures of the season,
being inspired to write paragraphs about the single pumpkin donut I ate that
one day. But that’s one of the benefits of a long Halloween Season. Maybe I’ll
get back into that rhythm. And write about aluminum ladders and such.
