Halloween!

I had forgotten how utterly festive it is in New York, where there are few Baptists around to remind people what a basically satanic holiday this is. For weeks now people have been draping their brownstone stoops with fake cobwebs and putting up pumpkins and skeletons, etc, but it was not until this weekend -- and especially today -- that the full glory of the season maifested itself. A children's Halloween parade starts in the little park near my house in about 15 minutes, but the excitement was already building. Walking Garth past the nearby elementary school, an excited torrent of children and some adults dressed as princesses, spacemen, frogs, witches, etc. streaming by.
"We got candy and no homework!" one excited boy announced to his mother. "All the classes got candy and no homework!"
I also saw my first costumed dog, though I am not sure what he was supposed to be, as well as a grown woman in a skull mask, talking on a cell phone.
I really wished Diane Arbus were here to appreciate it all.
I think the real reason New Yorkers love Halloween is that it's all about being someone else, about reinventing yourself. And what else, really, do people come here for?

seize the warm day

There’s a real “carpe diem” aspect to the weather here. All week it didn’t get out of the 50s, and then suddenly, Friday, we were in the 70s. Saturday, it was 80.
Today, it’s snowing. Anybody driving to Vail, a couple of hours west of here, is required to use chains. We’ll get about six inches before we’re done, so they say.
Preparing for winter has been a sport around here. I didn’t get my snow boots bought; that’ll just have to be done tomorrow, in time to stand outside for three hours and sell pumpkins to benefit Habitat for Humanity. They don’t cancel stuff around here, so I’m probably gonna be doing it.
I went to the grocery store today. In North Carolina, whenever inclement weather was coming, I had a friend who would send out this e-mail:
BREAD AND WATER!
MILK AND DIAPERS!
BEER AND VIDEOS!
There were no such runs on any of those things. I bought bread and water and diapers – I passed on the beer and videos, although my husband was at Video One and saw no scares, and I did see a college kid cleaning out the fridges preparing for a big football game. Nobody talked about snow at all. That’s because it happens all the freakin’ time. There’s been snow here in AUGUST, fer Chrissakes.
WELCOME TO COLORADO!

High Holidays

There was a different feeling on the street today when I got up at the crack of 10:30 and took the dog for a walk. At first I couldn't decide what it was about: the cloudy humidity? The quiet? It did seem oddly quiet. More working-age people than usual on the streets, dressed up but looking slightly aimless. By the time I had reached the synagoge nearest to my apartment and seen the police barricades outside and the people streaming in I had already figured it out: duh, Rosh Hashanah.
It's always a curious feeling to be caught up in an holiday that isn't yours. I had a sudden sense of guilt as the dog and I walked past the synagoge, like we were disrupting the sanctity of the day by our very existance. I also felt somehow betrayed, like this was a secret I had been left out of. This isn't Borough Park; nobody seems to observe, or even notice, the Sabbath. Now suddenly, months after my arrival, it turns out that lots of my neighbors are Jewish! Who knew. They have certainly kept it under wraps until now.

In an unrelated matter, the mystery of the tree barge has belatedly been solved. It turns out it was art.