Halloween at the Cove *Reflective Dao*

Oh so many moons ago, the man used to do so much on the days with a symbol of the pumpkin. So long ago seems like it was another life, another time, and another era. So long that it hardly seems like the same person could survive time that long.

Ever just sit and think back along your life, along the snowy paths that brought you to reflect, and finally realized that you have lived a long life? That events in life changed and shaped you. Those same events that were shaping you in a positive direction also setting you up to be ripped away so you fall, but falling to where, how long, and where will you land?

Remembering times, where you dressed up, and went to the church for Halloween. Halloween also brings the great perspective of fall and harvest. Working in the fields picking the fruit and vegetables, putting hay down to protect others crops from the winter cold.

Remember the months that surround it, the Appleseed Festival with all the Apple Jam, the cool crisp are the fall warning of winter. Hay rides with friends, hunting, and the parade of kids at school for the parents dressed in costumes.

The birthday of my brother following suit after Halloween. Canning of the harvest to last all winter, cooking creating food to feed the family. Ketchup, tomatoes, pickles, and much more. The smells from the kitchen going throughout the house. A simpler time where one struggles to try to get back to. However with every step you take trying to get back to that lifestyle, you seem to be getting farther away.

Trace though and find a little different way of celebration. A respect to the fallen. Dressed in a trench coat you go to a graveyard instead of to the living people door, something occurred where the dead are more pleasing to spend the holiday than the living. A relaxed feeling comes over you when you visit the dead.

Is it the fact that you are unafraid of death, wish for death, or is it just quiet enough to gain your relaxation? No being trying to compromise your being, no backstabbing happens from the dead, and trust is never disrupted by the dead.

Moving further down the trail, you spend the day with a child, taking him from door to door, making sure he is safe. Never intending him to eat the candy he is collecting. Throwing it out and giving him the candy you bought for him, as trusting a strangers candy is deadly. Was not so back in the time of the parades at the school, and the festival at Appleseed, but now it has become a very evil world, and a very evil time.

Remember how fun the kid had, reversing the roles of your own parents during those many moons ago. Having a different fun, but not as enjoyable as those many moons ago. Becoming an adult drained the purity of having fun out of you and left this empty shell of a kid.

The responsibilities, the pressure of society or of work, the bills, and money all seemed to drain a man of his purity. His purity in having fun, in living without concern. The images of the world's evil deeds forming in his mind. How can one truly spend a day of the dead with the living and the living evil of the world.

Listening to Misfits song title for this day. "Little dead are out in droves, I remember Halloween" somewhere along the song it states, "Candy Apples and razor blade, little dead are soon in graves". Be careful this Halloween.

Remember the bonfires, as a kid roasting hot dogs, marsh mellows, etc. Feeling the warmth in the cool night. Seeing the glow of yellow, red and occasionally a blue flame licking the logs and tree branches. As a teen watching it and having a wine cooler or beer.

Run toward that which you had you will realize it gets farther away. This means many things, and can apply to many instances in life. Somehow the choices that were presented were not a clear as thought to be when they were made. Choices reflected on seem cloudy at best. Ability to think of many different solutions in an instant has been honed and when used to reflect back on, it makes one wonder the following: What the hell?

Realizing and accepting that this was what it was before all the choices, realizing that this will always be present. When you die will a person take up your position? Will they walk among the dead and give them company the Halloween that you can no longer be present for?

Will I have an apprentice, a person to succeed me? Even as twisted as the tree trunk of my soul is, I still seem calm, I still can find peace on Halloween, this night is my night. This night gives my shattered soul a break, a peaceful night that allows rest. The one time in a year my mind empties and allows me time to come to a point where my demons, my darkness can relax and stop showing me things.

Stop showing my friends cheating on people, backstabbing people, or whatever evil thought is going through their minds. The peace of those helped and their demons coming to show me those deeds that have in the past been done to my friends, all these rest on this one night.

Pick Christmas for presents, pick Thanksgiving for food, my holiday is the one night I feel fully at peace and that is Halloween. Still remembering back then and living now, it makes me want to go back in time and freeze it, to live in that section for years at a time.

I miss my childhood, I miss the life I once had. I miss the life because now I understand what I once had as a child. I remember being in touch with most of nature, and was able to navigate the wilds with an internal compass.

I miss those days. I lost them and even though I try to walk back to those days it seems that they are always still a little far to get to. Funny, when kids are young they want to grow up, and even though they may not admit it, those that are adults wish to return to childhood. Ironic how much we do not understand as a child and sometimes as an adult.

Happy Harvest my friends be really safe.