Hallowe'en, of course

True astrological Samhain is NOT on October 31st, but closer to November 4th when the Sun is equidistant between the solstice and equinox.  I attribute my inability to come up with the perfect costume in time to join everyone else to this calendar inaccuracy.  If people used an ephemeris instead of a calendar, things would make more sense.  We would celebrate energy thresholds at the appropriate times.  But we don't.
The last costume I remember from my childhood was the last one my mother made.  Though most other kids, even then, were getting "store bought" costumes, Mum had a contempt for the idea that made me feel cheap for even wanting something shiny made of crummy polyester that would last long enough for me to get rained on while wearing it.
I was about 8 and we were living at the end of the dirt road that I still live on, but at that time we were the only people out here, camping out in my Grandmother's summer cottage.  I loved the magic of the place, and the sense of safety I felt.  Mum's unhappiness and desperation was always so near the surface, and I think it was worse during that time, but it was a white noise we were all used to tuning out, and living in the woods where the light was so pure, and the stars so numerous, there were benefits  we couldn't have come up with on our own.
That year, Mum decided to get creative and make a costume for me calling it the Spirit of Autumn.  It consisted of leaves that she cut out carefully matching the type of leaf to the color of fabric, and being a self taught botanist, made herself crazy getting it right.  I was a lot less excited about it by the time it was done because so much pain was in each leaf, but it was charming.  she sewed each leaf on to a leotard, and made a bit of headgear to go with it, I could have looked like a brush pile, but I had the sense of looking Shakespearean and was  very proud of it, convinced I'd win the contest at school.  What I didn't know at the time was that there was no chance because the same 2 girls always won, their parents were too big a deal for them to lose.  Sure enough, the one dressed as a Disney Princess won, and mum was annoyed about having put so much time and energy into the costume that it went into the trash soon afterwards.
It must have been painful and hard to be a divorced woman in a small town in NH in 1957, it must have been hard to have a couple of big secrets, and a big history to uphold in the face of it.
At the coming of Samhain, when the veil thins and perhaps I can talk to her more clearly, I want her to know that it took me a long time, but I understand now about the split between what one thinks of oneself in an essential and private way, and the action of karma in the social world.
I know what it is like to live behind a wall of ice made of the finest clear water so that you can see through but nobody can hear you.   I wish she could have known that she wasn't alone.

Old Bag

To follow up on the previous thought, I'm remembering being 16, and other than calling someone fat, the worst thing you could call them was old.  It didn't matter to us if someone was a decent person, they got a pass for being funny, but otherwise, there was a constant vigilance about where on the attractiveness scale each of us were.
I will add, that not only were all of us childhood recipients of unwanted sex, but also came from families where appearance was vastly more important than substance.
We grew up believing that our fuckability was the measure of our value.
The alpha female of that group is now dead, she left the wreckage of her life and a story untold, a brilliant talent suppressed.  She feared aging and at enormous cost, isn't going to be faced with it.
I remember feeling somewhere way underneath the desire to belong to a group of friends, that there was something wrong with the way we were looking at ourselves and evaluating others.  Part of it was an extreme and somewhat rebellious playing out of the messages we were getting, but there was still the pressure to comply, to knuckle under, to be good girls.
None of us had any intention of being good girls.
There was a time of promiscuity, between not knowing how to say "no", not knowing we had the right say "no" and not knowing the consequences to our sense of self by not saying "no".  This coincided with the time of drug use, a convenient way to fit in, to not look too closely at the life we were in and a general fishing expedition for love, attention, safety or direction.
Pretty silly from here, but dangerous toys in the hands of the unconscious.
You don't have to experience childhood sexual abuse to be conditioned to believe yourself to be a commodity, society will help with that.  The only person I know who escaped it was raised a staunch Catholic in a big Catholic family in a big Catholic neighborhood, and sometimes I think she just closed her eyes.
I still can hear the derision in my friend's voice as she called her mother an old bag, a woman who could not escape her circumstances, who could not protect her children, whose only refuge was in making sure that everything looked 'lovely'.
I also will never be able to get rid of the memory of my mother, about a week before one of her suicide attempts, crawling around on the floor one night, sobbing looking for a piece of a tooth that had broken off.  "You have no idea how bad it is to get old" she told me.
Well, now I have an idea of how bad it is.
I also have a great mass of gratitude for how good it is.  Old Bag?  Bring it on.

Vanity

In the OED, it is not until the 3rd choice of definitions that you see the word relating to personal attachment to appearance.
The word means emptiness, coming from a Latin word vanus, giving rise to the word vanitas.
Meaninglessness, fruitlessness also are words used to describe it.  A path that leads nowhere.
The trouble I see now is how emptiness and the value given to it has created society's view of itself.
As girls, tiny girls, we are encouraged to be vain about our looks, more than boys, though boys are inculcated with suggestions as to where they should project their vanity as well.
So, here we are, in a world where if you are talented in an area that requires your personal visibility, and particularly if you are female, looks count.
Good looking women and men are paid more than plain ones.  Or heavy ones.  When I have been criticized about my appearance, particularly my size, I enjoy pointing out that when the critic and I are both dead, we will decompose at the same rate.
Still, the shame about my appearance instilled in me at the breast and beyond makes it hard for me to see a photo of myself.  I mean, inside, I am a magnificent waterfall, fireworks, points of celestial light spinning around a central vortex.  I am supplied with wings and gills, whatever I need - so when I see a photo of a grumpy old woman with bad hair and jowls, it gives me a start.
There used  to be cultures where mirrors were not allowed, it was considered an affront to the tribe to gaze on one's own face instead of noticing the look on other's faces when you were in their presence.  A much better gauge to the kind of person you are.
And of course, there is the story of Narcissus, maybe he was a pretty boy, but I'm not certain the end to his story is enviable.
So, why do we all care so much and why does it hurt so much to call people names based on their appearance?  I personally don't plan to take my appearance with me into the afterlife if there is one, and if there is not I won't be needing it there either.
Why do many of us care so much how we are evaluated by others?   Status ranked by things that are empty, meaningless, fruitless and leading nowhere.

Evening Up the Apple Crisp

Growing up in NH, we ate seasonally and I still think there's something wrong with strawberries and asparagus in the fall, squash in the spring and mangoes anytime.
The town I grew up in had a magnificent apple orchard on the highest hill in town, many acres and at least 125 years old, providing any variety of apple you would need:  Macs for sauce, eating if you got them early enough, Empires, Gravensteins, Paula Reds for pies, Macoun, the best eating apples, and I'm not arguing with you about this, it is gospel truth, and Cortlands for the perfect apple crisp.
As soon as the Cortlands were available, my mother made apple crisp and kept it going through Thanksgiving at least.
By Christmas, we demonstrated the Buddhist idea that all pleasure turns into pain, but in October we still had to restrain ourselves from bailing in the apple crisp in amounts that would frighten a cardiologist.
On Wednesday the crisp was made; no matter how few people were in the house, it was gone in 24 hours.  There could be a ragged 2/3 of a pan before bed, but by morning there would be enough for 2 or 3 servings, and the edges as straight as if cut with a laser.
Over time, I have modified the recipe to justify the consumption of such a treat by adding an ingredient and reducing another one.
I know there are crisp recipes that include oatmeal.  I eschew and repudiate them.  Try this one:
Preheat the oven to 350
Peel and slice in medium sized chunks, 8 Cortland apples and put in a deep dish pie pan
[this is not a pie, let the width of the pieces be 1/2 inch or bigger]
pour 1/3 cup of apple cider and juice of 1/4 of a lemon over the apples
Using your fingers, mix up a stick of butter, 1 C ww flour, 3/8 c almond meal, 2/3 c dark brown sugar,
[or combination of brn and date sugar, but if using date sugar, increase amount a bit]
1/2 t cinnamon
pinch of cardamom, don't over do it.
mix in the butter allowing it to be chunky, mores than with piecrust or biscuits
spread as much as you need over the top, save what you don't for something else, or if you want it really sweet, use it all
bake for 25 minutes.
It'll keep longer than it takes for it to disappear.

Like Magic

When something good happens and you didn't do anything to deserve it or put things in place for it to happen, it feels like magic.  When something undesirable happens and you didn't do anything to deserve it or bring it on, it gets called bad luck.  The briefest of moments that it takes to dismiss responsibility for what is going on all around me leaves me lots of time to ruminate, complain, come up with possible solutions or other ways to see it, when really all that is required is to see whatever it is for whatever it is.  Maybe not so simple, I've gotten through my life without a high success rate on this one, I do really well seeing what it was, though.  Points for that.

Procrastination

A while back a fb friend posted a request for procrastination therapies.  In choosing to put it in my pile of things to mull over, I invoked a few weeks of writer's cramp.
Procrastination is one of the easiest topics to put aside for later.
It's unimportant.
The very idea brings on a flood of creativity in some other direction.
If that doesn't happen, well, the laundry gets done, folded and put away, the dishes and countertops are clean, the car has been vacuumed and bills paid, or at least sorted.
There are people for whom procrastination is not only a way of courting pretend powerlessness in one or two areas, but is a vantage point on the workings of all things.
Moving furniture gives me the feeling that I contribute to transforming an undesirable circumstance, alleviating the pain of a decision or any of the dozens of obvious uncertain outcomes that act out like sloppily programmed alarm clocks.
When I have been sure I knew what was up, I have been wrong.  Wandering blind, I have tripped over wonders that I would have missed if I'd had been all nose-to-the-grindstone.
It's beginning to dawn on me that many of the standards I took for real are chains.  So much effort has been saved through laziness and inconsistency.
Yet, having experienced serendipity, having seen that knowledge is frequently incomplete and surrounded by mirrors, adrenaline still has the power to over-ride, and at least if I move the table over here and the hutch over there, there will be more room for guests.