Thanksgiving

I am saying grinchy things on Facebook, and it's because my FRIENDS are participating in the hype of black Friday. Thanksgiving is okay, minus the turkey massacre and obligatory gluttony. It's still okay because family travels to be together, reunited and keeping bonds together that otherwise would frill away with time and distance.

But black Friday is a recent phenomenon on my radar and it's disgusting. I am not often repulsed like this and it shows me where I need to work some acceptance and compassion into my being, but, but, but...

Let's pretend everything is fine and keep shopping. Let's pretend everyone has a job and the world is fed and that the worlds resources are going to last forever and there aren't any lifestyle changes to be made. Let's stick to tradition even though we don't even really enjoy the taste of turkey in relation to how many hours it takes to prepare it!

Okay. Outrage exorcized.

I am finding myself in a moment of disbelief, similar to my Halloween revelations. I live my daily life struggling towards integrity. I don't watch tv much so I'm not tuned into the state of the world. But when reality of society and the zeitgeist we are in become revealed to me through the trickles of media that I am exposed to, I enter into a state of temporary shock and fear at what this planets inhabitants have become. The dominating species has become a bubbling murmuring mumbling drone of collective shufflers shuffling resources back and forth in a mechanized hurdling forth, like a destructive force with only sparks of light and creativity popping up beneath the asphalt of civilIzation.

Let's turn our attention now to that spark and lift of creativity and envision it catching on. Let's pay attention to the demonstrating protesters occupying the world steadily, and the various innovations that lead to easier, more efficient output of creativity, with more sharing and more access to helpful information, and the increased abundance and life expectancy and whatnot... And let's contrast it to the simultaneous increase in anxiety obesity depression suicide and incarceration. Then, without wanting to go further into the darkness again I am going to pull my hope strings to lift the future into view.

Perhaps an easy transition, or perhaps instigated by a catastrophe. Perhaps the weather destroys us, and we are surprised at the strength of mother natures wrath, but inevitably, the dinosaur bones are used up and no longer fuel our colectively obsessively consumptive lifestyles. Sure, smart And dedicated people have invented technology that allows us to keep using the Internet and have personal transportation, but everything looks different. Zombies aren't driving to work on a freeway packed with cars. Refrigerated trucks aren't hauling packaged foods to supermarkets with fluorescent, awful lighting and plastic Christmas decorations. No, it looks rathe different in this future vision of mine.

Neighbors obviously know each other and occasionally depend on each other for something like childcare or companionship. Catholic neighbors hang out with their hippie neighbors and find commonality in their children, their hopes, and dreams. Food is grown locally and work doesn't involve commuting, nor does it involve menial tasks in abstracted reality, but are mostly the workings of a slow, daily life. The hustle and bussle of our current reality is transferred to a hustle to provide for the rest of humanity, the poor folks under tyrannical rule in relatively far away countries, but because of technological advances, the other side of the planet is a hop, skip and a jump away. A three day journey used to get Jefferson across the state of Virginia. We can get to bumfuck china these days!)

So there. My time is up

Ideal Hallow's Eve

I'm in the suburbs this year. Stark constrast to last years Reclaiming spiral dance in golden gate park of san francisco with the wiccan community, where i cried and was reborn and rebirthed and integrated into the cycle of life, death and the seasons. The suburban halloween was filled with "gotta go to safeway and buy candy" and an invite to a block party where they serve cider and donuts... Which is nice and all, but missing the point, i'm sure. There were frankensteins hanging from trees, grave stones, and witches who'd flown their broomsticks into roofs. Nice decorations, but still, missing some point...

I talked with a catholic african woman today who was babysitting two blondies, and i really like this woman, despite her archaic language regarding the spirit world. She asked me if i celebrated halloween this year, and i said that my son was asleep from 5 to 7, so i did not, but i mentioned that i love this time of year. I dropped a hint that i was open to discussing this further by mentioning the reason that i love this time of year, being that the veils between the worlds are thin.

She said that halloween focuses on evil things, and so when her children were younger she would dress them as angels instead of skeletons and witches. We talked about darkness and light for a while, but this evening as i envisioned next year's halloween, i came up with further ideas on how to celebrate Better.

Leading up to our doorstep i would like to have a memorial shrine to all our ancestors where visitors can contribute if they would like to commemorate someone who died. I would also like to commemorate those who were born recently. I would commemorate my grandmother who died before my son was born, and i would also commemorate my friends baby who died a month after she was born last november.

I would offer the parents cider and mead, and the children would get oatmeal raisin cookies, or chocolate chip cookies, or cinammon+sugar cookies. Yummy. And i would dress in costume, of course. I'd probably be a witch. I love witch fashion. But i may decide to be a fairy. I like fairy fashion, too.

I hope that by infusing the suburbs with just a little bit of Thought regarding the sacred possibilities of this Time of Year, and commorating the cycles of life and the seasons, that we can move beyond the superficialities of consumer culture that permeats suburbia.