/lit/ - Literature

this tho:

what happens on All Hallows' Eve? in a certain sense, you cannot imagine a more polar opposite for a holiday such as Easter. it is profane and bizarre, and waltzes with ghosts and monsters in the dark. personally i've never like Hallowe'en all that much. i find it kitschy and boring, but it is mostly because too much philosophy has made me cranky and particular, which is unbecoming of the Dao.

things return from the dead on Hallowe'en, and wander the streets. the whole neighbourhood makes obeisance to demons, and to families. it is a profane holiday, and a highly commercial one, and yet there is something also wonderfully pagan about it: that that which cannot be exorcised must be celebrated. the offering of a Treat in lieu of a Trick is a far cry from the sensibilities of the ancient city of Fustel de Coulanges, and yet only a city truly without gods and spirits is a true necropolis.

everything winds up being automated in the end, even these notes, as ad hoc and improvisational as they are. maybe the future has burned out, at last, and left us only with relics, remnants, and so much ontological shrapnel. and yet what is to be done with all of this? set it on fire, or give it away, it amounts to much the same thing.

the oldest, and first, Trick in the world is the one played by Prometheus on Zeus, in which the gods discovered - to their horror and dismay - that things were not always what they appeared to be, that all that glittered was not cold, and there was thereafter an infinite breach opened up between the surfaces of things and their depths. today our situation is one that would have appalled Nietzsche, that being *depth without surface* - we have forgotten how to dance, in every sense of the word, even if it is with the skellies.

i'm going to give out candy tonight and, truth be told, i have never really been all that amped up about Hallowe'en. but how else can i explain all of this happens on mysterious and holy days, shot through in even these debased ways with the Ars Moriendi? you have to laugh about it or you'll go crazy. then i guess you just laugh some more.