a prelude for october

October at last. Autumn has truly started here--the leaves have turned, there's a chill in the air, the rains have already started falling . . . sometimes I get a little emotional the first time a real autumn storm happens. I love this season, and I love this month.

This is the month of Halloween, a holiday whose aesthetic I've always loved. I still remember going all out decorating and dressing up as a kid, wanting the season to never end. Part of that, of course, is just fall--the colors, the leaves, the smell of fallen leaves, the chill in the air--but the holiday itself, and by extension the month it occupies, also has a special place in my heart. Jack-o-lanterns and spooky ghosts and skeletons and little cartoony gravestones that say RIP on them. (Though I know at least one person who hates when people say this, I'm not actually that into horror as a genre; I'm mostly here for the fun and whimsy. But horror fans getting excited for their favorite movies makes me happy, so I'm not complaining either.)

There's an A Softer World which describes Halloween as the only time of year you can really dress for the job you want, and Jason Webley has been known to introduce some of his seasonal songs by saying that it is the one night of year when we can take off our masks and reveal who we really are (I'm sure there's a recording of this somewhere but I'm too lazy to search; sorry). There's something about that, I think: the way we celebrate it, Halloween is ostensibly a night of masquerade, but there's an element of masquerade that allows us to be a little more honest about who we are. That is, wearing a real mask makes it a little easier to drop the metaphorical ones.

I don't really have a point here, or even a good way to segue into this next bit: I'm going to try once again to write a little something every day this month, because it's a fun challenge. I'm planning on using this set of prompts, which given my endless fascination with the sky and weather probably shouldn't require explanation, though I think I'll try to reshuffle the moon days around so they correspond with this year's phases rather than with, I presume, those of 2019.

Normally I'd try to mix in some observations on news and the world, and maybe some personal anecdotes to tie it all together, but this month I have nothing much to say. I'm glad fall is here; I'm still tired, society is still on edge from the pandemic, hope still feels firmly grounded in folly. The year is drawing rapidly to a close and things still feel both stagnant and precarious.

Regardless, I hope the season is treating you well. I hope that it is exactly as spooky as you'd like it to be. I hope you are pleasantly surprised by a gust of wind, that you can watch the leaves dancing against a stormy sky. I hope, even if it's only for one night, you can take off your mask and be who you truly are.