It seemed the witching hour had arrived early. A snowstorm started blanketing our neighborhood on Saturday, adding white on white to the cobwebs adorning our gate and door in anticipation of Halloween on Monday night.
The city lapsed into semi darkness and sheeting rain spliced with big fat snowflakes fell from the sky. I was in the minority in New York – one who was spellbound by the sight of snow falling so effortlessly while all around people grumped about the roads and the difficulty of walking the streets and of the freezing cold that froze out so many events.
On Sunday the children were out early, trick and treating, parents all smiles as they trailed behind. One boy, a dead ringer for Harry Potter, was dressed as an Apple Computer with a picture of Steve Jobs and ‘Live the Dream’ on both sides of his computer framed body.
Another little boy came out of a shop and starting crying saying “They made fun of me”. His mother scooped down and said “Honey, they just thought you were cute.” It reminded me of a time years ago when my close friend, Sarah’s daughter, Daisy, whom I cherish and adore, starting crying and said I was laughing at her. I’d been delighted by something she’d said and had started laughing. “You have to be careful with children as they can be sensitive to how others see them”, said Mark, Daisy’s Dad, “your laughing makes her think she is doing something silly or wrong.” This memory came back in a rush and I really felt for that little boy. How easily we can all feel that way.
Walking down Bleecker Street at dusk on Monday night, the weenie children were out on Hallowed Eve. Bedecked and bespeckled with all manner of costumes, it was all glorious fun and I raced home to put on my favourite Scheherazade outfit to be part of the joy of the night. It was an evening of families and community and the lantern smiles carved into pumpkins on so many doorsteps made me feel that Thanksgiving was finding its beginning in the harvest of Halloween.
Josh and I joined others at an Asian fusion café for a bowl of mee goreng before Josh left to teach a couple of music classes and I walked past the scary monsters to find a place at the frontline of the Village Halloween Parade crowd. The parade is known for its pageant sized puppets and anyone in costume is able to march. It’s the largest public Halloween event in the United States and the only major night parade, really like a carnivale. In that moment, I could have been in Rio.
I was close to the front as the crowd swelled to a mighty number and the parade lit its way down the streets. Gigantic skeletons with massive heads swooped into the crowd, their maniacal smiles screeching into streets of people while men with beards played Lady Gaga and wiccan creatures blessed the crowd, blessed the earth, blessed New York. Frankenstein was there, so too Casper the Friendly Ghost, singing witches, witchy singers and groups that looked like The Addams Family – I spotted look-a-likes of Gomez, Morticia, Fester, Lurch, Pugsley, Wednesday — and who could forget Thing!
I returned home to a bath, propping up a book Josh had urged me to read – A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead and the Making of Modern America by Dennis McNally. It seemed an unlikely choice for me and I resisted it for a long time. And yet I was hooked on the opening page where the author was talking about the two fundamental intellectual orientations in his life, the first being the civil rights and antiwar movements and the anti-materialistic aspects of ‘hippie.’ All of this shaped his affinity for elements of culture outside the mainstream. The second was a profound respect for the study of history. It was my Mum who’d encouraged me to study history when I was about to start High School, telling me that I would never regret the richness of the material and the learning, and I haven’t. My aunt has been further inspiration in her career as an historian. That McNally chose a topic that kept him close to his first orientation made sense to me, as a curveball journey steeped in so much individuality, imagination and creativity.
I’m also living in New York at a time that is as much about the making and breaking of modern America as we know it now as it was for the 1960’s of the book’s trajectory. The social movements rising here are borne of, and sustained by, some of the same passion and energy as other earlier movements. I met an older black man in Washington Square Park the other day – “my real name is Courtney but everyone calls me Bones” he said. Bones was telling me that many black men didn’t feel that they could take part in Occupy Wall Street at Zuccotti Park because they had been at the forefront too often and would be a magnet for police. “You know, I never thought I would see this movement for justice in my lifetime”, he said reflectively. “There are so many of us without jobs, and without any hope that we will get a job, and yet this uprising may turn things around so that we don’t lose another generation on the streets, another generation that is out of work and out of hope.”
I was busy doing my own thinking, about gender and justice and giving women and girls the economic and physical security they need to live productive lives and to realize their full potential. I continued to percolate in this space of thinking about how to transform systems and shape policy while surrounded by so much intense and lively activity.
And now, finishing this letter, I’m pulling back the curtains to watch the drama on the street below. A little girl in a spectacular mash of Calamity Jane meets Fairy Queen is pulling a little cart filled with grinning pumpkins, lit from within. Cars in the street stop, knowing when they’ve met their match. Her father follows a little distance behind, himself seemingly mesmerized by the glowing spectacle of his determined daughter and her own treat-tricking contraption. They cross the street and she stops and looks up. I don’t know if she sees me watching but I sure see her.
Jane Sloane
*for Hallowed humour, go to this link – Dear Mountain Room Parents by Maria Semple, The New Yorker