Apparently, there was an earthquake last night. We felt exactly nothing. Based on the time, we would have been walking home after dinner. Oblivious.
My first California earthquake, and I missed it. (It wos closer to Nick’s old place than to where we live now. Maybe Nick’s house fell down boom.) I was already for the first quake. I was planning my tears, my shaking, my blaming M. for making my life dangerous and unsafe.
No drama. My earth did not move.
My central sadness today is about the joylessness of the holidays.
I like Halloween. Sadly, I work in an office that celebrates holidays with the fervor and fiesta wildness of a golf clap. The only tangible nod to today’s holidays was this plate in the lunch room.
Cute. But lacking somehow. No costumes, no frivolity, no decorations.
Meanwhile, M. taunted me throughout the day with the announcements from his office land. The IT department had sound affects and other elaborate decorations. M. had a vampire’s shrine with himself as the dark lord’s visage. Folks brought their kids in to trick or treat the offices and departments. They had lunch and party beverages and cake. He showed me pictures of his coworkers, witches and sorcerers and whatnot.
My coworkers were all dressed like office workers. I spotted one decoration, really. It was a cutesy wood carved “Happy Halloween” with a silhouette of a cat discreetly lying on a cubicle rim.
To catch some join of the season, I fled work a bit early with some spreadsheets in my virtual hand. I figured, what I missed during the day would come in the evening with little costumed kids begging at the door.
They didn’t show. So, we walked the streets. Here’s what I saw.
Desolation row.
Not sure whether the terrorists have won. Or maybe the good-old-fashioned-middle-class fear of pedophiles was keeping the streets clear.
We did see one wandering band. Tight knit and definitely together, maybe four adults and six kids. Costumes, revelery and then they were gone.
Wrong to my vision of the holiday, we did come across streets full of kids with their parents last Saturday. They were trick or treating their way done the main street begging at the doors of the local merchants, who had participating Halloween welcome signs in their windows.
I wonder what it means, but I only saw one kid who had bothered to wear something that wasn’t store-bought, polyester, pre-fab costuming. He wore overalls, work gloves, a bandana in his back pocket and a tractor or seed company on his cap. He drove his little sister around in a wooden wagon behind his tractor-like trike. Excellent farmer feel. Everyone else on the street was wearing a branded, commercialized, technicolor unit. Snow White, Cinderella, Tommy the Tank Engine, and way more princesses than one could count.
