My friend Hank loved Halloween, and I have a picture of him on the bulletin board above my desk holding a plastic orange skeleton on his lap near a small Christmas tree in one of the many single-girl, one person Christmas tree because what's the point of setting up a full-size one apartments I have lived in over the years. Like many people, he dressed a little on the Halloweenish side all the time and so for the big day, he'd put on a pair of fangs and a trenchcoat -- voila, a vampire gangster! He'd often play the blues at some dive bar for the holiday, the scary Robert Johnson blues, the I sold my soul at the crossroads stuff, the late night, ain't no blues 'cept between a man and a woman that's in love blues.
A lot of blues songs revolve around the idea of selling your soul to the Devil for something on earth -- fame, fortune, your one true love. But the way I see it, we sell our souls a little at a time in increments so small that we hardly know we're doing it. I once knew a woman who drank gin out of the cap of its bottle every morning because she felt that pouring it into a glass would mean that she had become an alcoholic. She called them her "wake-ups" because they stopped her hands from shaking. And so it is. The Devil gets his due, whoever that asshole is. For those who don't believe in evil, well, that's the biggest deception of all. We tell ourselves that we're okay and that we're not going to ever end up at a crossroads, that the crossroads is as far off as death or the next thing we agreed to do that we don't want to do. But that day comes for all of us, the day of temptation and reckoning and whether we mete out our fate in capfuls or straight from the bottle, and we will drink.
Michelle's Spell of the Day
"The face of fear I display in my novels is not the pale specter from the sunken grave, nor is it the thing that goes bump in the night." V.C. Andrews
Cocktail Hour
Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Halloween!
9 comments:
The devil rosined up his bow! Happy Halloween!
I sold my soul at the hades version of Wal-Mart at a rock bottom price and it will take me ten life times to buy it back
Happy Halloween, Michelle! Miss you! -R
I'm glad that someone who took the time to get an education in writing is actually good at it.
Happy Halloween!
You know it--if the crossroads is a place, we don't have to hitch a ride there, or walk or run there. It's right inside us, in that part that we only look toward when stricken with envy, greed or other such desires unrequited.
Have a wonderful Halloween--and as always, I hope your firearm is part of your costume. You're the greatest teacher of writing one could ever have. Glad so many others realize your ability.
And when he has brought forth and reared this perfect virtue, he shall be called the friend of God, and if ever it has been given to a man to put on immortality, it shall be given to him.
--Plato, The Symposium
What is more fitting with All Hallow's Eve than a quote about immortality? And it should also be given to a her to put on the aegis of immortality. You know those Greek's penchant for excluding the girls from everything.
Peace out.
That cake looks amazing.
Halloween is good luck sometimes- I got a hot guys number and a date for Saturday!
Cha ching!
Damnation by a thousand cuts...And all those corporate automatons are really the walking dead?
Hum, there are several country road crossroads within walkign distance of my house. I've never stood at any of them at midnight, though.
I suppose after a while I could got used to vampires walking on the street if I lived in the US.
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