The breeze always starts sometime in October as if there were a timer to set it off. Sometimes the dry air cuts the day in half and the humid morning is completely replaced by cool and dry afternoon in cool breeze. In history, the breeze had a different name. People called it the “trade wind”. It was a time when the slave ships began to sail across the Atlantic from Africa all the way to the shore of the south coast with loaded slaves, men and women, in shackles and chains.
Remembering this, Halloween seems to be a perfect fit. Although Halloween today is about fun than historical nostalgic. The cool morning makes you feel that it turns into a balloon filled with fresh air. You feel as if you could uplift yourself to float higher and higher until you disappear from this noisy world. As the day progresses, people in costumes with painted faces will appear. A witch on the bike, a clown stands outside the grocery store, a student with bloody mask and painted dripping blood as if a surgeon just left the emergency room. My eager neighbors decorated their front yard and lawns long ago, real and plastic pumpkins in different cuts and designs, bats and cobwebs, air-filled demons in different colors… Everyone is wondering whether they will have unexpected guests at night knocking on their doors and proclaim “trick or treat?”
During Halloween night, when the weather is fine, there will always be more children in streets. They push one another while walking and giggling. It is a day for fun, not a day in fear although the world can look fearful, especially with such uncertainties and suspense.
For some reason, I somehow feel each day has become a Halloween in the past two years.
I guess there is a reason why people celebrate this holiday. It reminds one that in this world life and death, beauty and ugliness, hope and hopelessness…will always be there for us. This is part of the reality.
Happy Halloween.
October 31, 2018
