The skeleton puppet handed out around $50 worth of candy in about 45 minutes on Halloween Eve. The younger kids tend to thank the puppet, while most of the older kids conscientiously thank the humble operator; adults think that the puppet is cool, awesome and creative. One assured me that I’d won Halloween. This was the first candy-night excursion that was warm enough for me to forego a jacket.
There are many worse ways to spend a late-October evening than momentarily brightening the lives of innumerable neighbors, and of course that’s the actual point of Halloween.
When the river runs red and gold with fallen leaves …
The Duende skull, re-dressed and re-positioned as befits the Memoria season.
Our annual Memoria shelf, the colorful fallen leaves and dried flowers representing the best of the decedents’ living thoughts, words and deeds. Two new additions this year.
On the evening of Nov. 1, when poetic tradition holds that the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest, I performed the annual reconsecration of my totenpass amulet. Incense burned, poetry was spoken, water poured and honey tasted, beaneath a certain tree, beside a certain river. Part of the rite involves laying down beneath the tree and looking up through the incresingly sparse, now-yellow leaves, and this year I was rewarded with a cool optical illusion, as my vision blurred and the leaves took on something of the nature of glowing stars against the sky.
Still upcoming is our annual visit to the Day of the Dead exhibition at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, followed by traditional burrito dinner at one of the local restaurants.