The Burning of Wishes.

Halloween is the kick off to the Kid's season. Free candy you can get by going door to door dressed up as your favorite Star Wars Character! It doesn't get better than this when your a little kid growing up in the Midwest. You also knew that the next day was November 1st. For me, that meant my birthday was coming, followed quickly by Thanksgiving and of course the best holiday in the Kid season; Christmas. After that, it was always a bleak few months of winter before spring and the distant hope of summer vacation.
For some reason, Halloween has been a center point in my life. Events that have had a profound impact on the direction of things either start on Halloween, or happen sometime after this date. I know it sounds a little crazy, but it's true.
When I was a kid in Illinois, one year my mother thought it would be cool to hand out glow in the dark rosary beads to kids instead of candy.
When I went back to school the next day, they all were piled on my desk. They all expected me to redeem their rosaries with candy from my bag. My bag! That was the year I got no candy and returned home with 50 or so glow in the dark plastic rosaries. If only we had raves back then. I could of made a fortune!
Cynthia, the girl I lived with for 3 years, met on Halloween.
That should of been the first red flag in that relationship.
Shes wearing a mask. She will always be wearing a mask!
That became our anniversary. Even after we broke up, we agreed to meet each other every year on Halloween at a hotel in Calistoga,CA we use to go to as a couple. That eventually ended after her current boy friend found out about the whole thing.
For a few years there, in my late 20's, nothing particularly note worth happened to me around this date. Well, I did walk on the stage at the Holy City Zoo as a comic for the first time November 1. I did hook up with a girl who looked like a hip snow white for a few weeks between Nov 1 and my Birthday about 5 years into comedy. That lasted about a month. But what a month!
When I was 12, I ran away from home for a week during Halloween and lived in a mall successfully till being caught by security.
Between now and Nov 1st is what I like to think of as my possibilities time. Usually, whatever big in my life happens, it happens now. Make of that what you will, but those are the facts. I don't know if it is a place where I can see fate folding into my life, or a coincidence, I only know that this time of year has always been unique for me.
It was once explained to me that this is my Power Time, if you are astrologically inclined to believe such things. I am a Scorpio. Please, don't give me the standard, "that explains it!"
I am tired of being astrologically discriminated against! Perhaps the new term is astrologically profiled. But really, when you ask whats my sign and I tell you Scorpio, should you go "Oh!" and take a step back like I just told you I have a disease? I guess in many ways, I fit the description of what a Scorpio is. Maybe there is some truth in the whole thing. That girl I told you about, the hip Snow White, when we got together she apparently had been hiding a crush on me for awhile. She picked up this giant tome one day titled something like, your sign and your possible mate. She looked up our compatibility based on birthdays. It was all bullshit of course, but it did say we would have incredible sex, so at the time I totally believed it. For the sake of the relationship of course. I don't even remember what her sign was anymore, but it didn't mention anything about me being totally clean at the time and her loving speed. So that was that with Snow White.

I have this weird thing about these two weeks between now and my birthday. I think if I put this out there, then nothing will happen. It's sorta like seeing a star in the corner of your eye and when you try to look straight on at it, it disappears. Same thing with this phenomenon. When ever I have been merrily going along in my life and this time of year comes along; stuff happens. But if I eagerly call attention to it, its just another two weeks on the calendar.
Carer leaps, girlfriends and adventures have always started around now. Of course this year, I am putting it in a blog and sending it out to the ether. What will that do?
There is a scientific explanation for why you can see dim stars from the corner of your eye but not straight on. You have more optical nerves bunched at the corners of your eyes than in the center. So, a far off and dim object, like a star in the night sky, seemingly disappears when you try to look straight at it. Less image receptors at the front of your eye. This use to drive me crazy as a kid! There is something about a clear night sky in the Midwest during winter. The air is as cold as you can imagine. Any exposed area of skin tingles for a moment and then goes numb if left uncovered for more than a few minuets. Those nights when the sky was clear and crisp like that, the stars seemed brighter. Out my bedroom window there were several trees whose branches came together above our backyard. The pattern they formed looked like a old man in profile. I could even see the comb over. He was only visible during winter. Other times of the year his features were covered over with the thick leaves. The biggest opening in this feature was where I imagined his forehead to be. As a little kid, I would pull the blinds up at night and stare at this for a hours. I thought it was God and the stars in his head was everything he was thinking about. I think this was my first accidental encounter with anything like mediation too. Those fading stars only visible when I wasn't trying to see them, taught me to relax my vision and not focus at any one point in Gods mind. So if I stayed very still and didn't try to focus in on those stars, the whole field of stars became visible for as long as I could maintain this state. I thought if I looked at it long enough, I would know what was in God's mind.
There were several nights I feel asleep with my head propped up on a pillow looking out my back window like that.
As I got older, the face in the branches looked less like God to me and more like this really old guy who did commentary on a local news station. After about 8, I just saw a crusty old man talking about the Stock Exchange with stars glimmering between dead branches. So much for mystery. I was jaded by 8!

I was 13 when we moved from Illinois to California. It was Summer time, so the old man wasn't visible threw the thick leaves of oak and maple trees. With all the light spilling upwards from California's city's and all the pollution smearing the night sky, stars have not seemed that bright ever again to me. Once, on a long road trip threw Arizona, I peed on the side of a mountain road. When I looked up, I could see something I had not been able to see even from my old bedroom window. There, in dazzling detail was the Milky Way stretched across the blue black night.
Like a lot of times in life, I found myself saying wow as my fingers were on my dick.
Sorry.
There it was, this giant swath of sky illuminated like a highway for the God's. It was the first time in a long time I felt anything like wonder looking up at the night sky. With all the artificial light burning ancient mystery from the sky, you can understand why it was so important to all the tribes that came before us when you see it from someplace like Arizona.
Whatever Halloween started out as, it really is a modern day pagan ritual to stave off the morose and stark realization that winter is quickly approaching. A last holiday with light and ghosts. A feast before winter when food and warmth become scarce.
Halloween was always about when I could start to see that old man in the trees whose head sparkled with stars. I always think of him around this time of year. I wonder if the pattern would still be visible to me after all this time? I don't look at the stars much any more either. In the city, the night sky becomes opaque with scattered light. In the suburbs, they are a bit more visible on those streets without a lamp post every 20 feet. You cant help but think we have removed some of the wonder from the night with all our eclectic light rendering it void. When was the last time you looked up for more than a moment at those impossibly far away points of flickering light?
Before all our modern ways, the stars served first as God's and then as a calendar. People must have eagerly counted down the end of winter by looking up at them threw clean skies. Now days, it's the holidays that tell me where I am on the calendar. Halloween is like My Spiritual New Years I guess. Things that are news seem to start around now. The fog and dark of a San Francisco winter night seem perfectly matched for the contemplative mood I slip into. So, another birthday approaches. Another batch of brittle regret and paper thin wishes to throw on the fires for another season.

You know how Burning Man started? It happened out at Ocean Beach at the end of the avenues. A guy had lost his girlfriend and was having a hard time getting over it. I'm with you on that! Him and a few friends collected everything she left behind, brought it all down to the beach and in a great glowing pyre, threw all the stuff into the bonfire! It's not a bad idea. Some cultures have you write your prayers on tiny slips of paper and then toss them on a flame. They believe the smoke is your prayer rising to Heaven. I am thinking of trying something like this. Get a bunch of friends together, some wood and some lighter fluid. What could go wrong with that combination? Instead of just torching what few remains I have left of Sam, I think it would be cool to have everyone write down what they want for the coming year and then we all throw the pieces of paper in at the same time. All our prayers might have a better chance of getting noticed if they show up in bulk. Who knows?
Whose in?