Halloween Blues (Now and Then)

Halloween came and went, and I can’t help but feel somewhat cheated. For all of the time, money and worry expended (before and after the event), I only got a few short hours of weeknight party. And for all of our emphasis on “dancing” in the days leading up to Halloween, when the time came I found my movement tragically restricted by the costume I worked so hard at putting together (and which unraveled little by little throughout the night.)

Instead of blogging about that, I will give you a little something from a journal entry I wrote last year, with no numerical date given, as I usually do, but dated simply “Halloween.” I offer it for a number of reasons:

*As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently reread my entire journal from around this time last year up until my departure from New York. I did it because I’m trying to figure out what to do when this experience is over, trying to remind myself of how unhappy I was there so I don’t feel so terrible about the possibility of not returning. It didn’t work. Even with all the pain, I can’t help but romanticize. Even though I was sad, I found so many moments where I caught myself blissful with the people I loved. Those relationships are indispensable.

I tell myself I will do things differently this time. I won’t accept the 9 to 5 life. I will make it work. New York is not dead.

The box only contributed to this feeling. We may have wanted to fashion an urban experience, an urban method of interaction, from Spartanburg’s often sluggish Main Street, but there are few places that can offer the real thing. And I need the real thing.

*So many people I know are struggling with what is commonly called “the real world.” (”Is there any life crisis more harrowing than the quarter life crisis?” Jordan asks me.) “Work” is something I have been removed from (in the traditional sense) for quite some time and will find myself having to return to soon. This entry, the reminder of my first “real world” job, is upwelling an anxiety that has been dormant since I first heard of my acceptance to Hub-Bub, but grows more and more active every day we move closer to Spring. What am I going to do?

*That said, there is still a funny little pleasure in seeing yourself as you were at any point in your past, but even more so when you can relate it to such a round, defined period of time (in this case, exactly one year ago.)

“Halloween.

At work.

It is unbearably cold in our office, almost as cold as it is outside. So cold I have to wear gloves to type. Sandra, befittingly, swears she is comfortable and refuses to jog the heat. Once, she even protested that it was warm in here. I cannot believe that this is true, but while I do not undress from the outdoors the entire day, sitting frumpily at my desk in a peacoat and scarf, she wears only a cardigan.

And there are other things, too. Every evening when I shut the lights and lock up, I am shocked by the electricity in the light-switches. There are eight light-switches in total, and every night at least three of them giggle as they send crackles of electricity through my fingertips. I never know which three it is going to be on any given night. I have resorted to standing in front of each light-switch cautiously, extending my finger, pecking my nail on the tip of the switch to make initial contact, and only then turning off the light. It is a nervewracking ritual and, needless to say, time consuming. It reminds me of all the places I have ever hated most, too-cold places with bristly carpet that roused the devil in every tactile encounter. Stuffy resort rooms in Colorado– thin air and raw throats…

And then there is a plant that sits against the bookcase in the median between our office and the conference room. It is medium-sized with large, teardrop shaped leaves. They also droop like tears, swooping into the median. My desk and this plant reside on the same side of the office. Everytime I leave my desk for any reason– to make copies, get to the fax machine, eat lunch, file invoices, go to the bathroom– I pass this plant. The edges of the teardrop leaves, though undetectable to the naked eye, are lined with spiny needles. Each time I pass, I graze them. No matter how thick my pants are, I feel the colonies of needles scraping across my thighs and the backs of my knees. No matter how I try to avoid them, no matter how near the center of the median I veer, I still get scratched. The teardrops reach out to me, far as they can stretch their slender, delicate necks.

With all the shivering, shocking and scratching, I will never get comfortable here. Thank God.”

I go on to talk about a trip to D.C. taken the previous weekend. It was fall and I thought myself in love:

“I woke to a fast-moving landscape of brilliantly colored fall trees reaching up on either side of the road that flattened them– magentas and oranges, reds and yellows, and all the variations in between. Wondered at this: the same type of tree- here all yellow and here all red– what motivates them to assert their individuality so much before death? I suppose it is sometimes so with people…Soon, the feeling of the road overswept me, the knowledge that we were doing something together finally, for with all of our wanderlust, our wanderings never seem to coincide. I watched him as he drove– his steadied fixation on the road, the smooth openness of the lane– and it seemed to speak for all of his stability, all of his dependability, and I loved him and believe I am still loving him now.”

How much can change in a year, as when work became unbearable I applied to come here, and the man’s wanderings took him to South America, where we forgot about each other.