heart beats

boo 👻

sadly no poem wanted to happen. c'est la brain. this is simply a small little space for one of my greatest joys of life.

not only bc the aesthetics - jackolanterns, bats, playful spooky ghosts, playful-spooky music, etc - but also bc there is actually a very deep depth to halloween. at least in certain key aspects of how it's stereotypically celebrated:

• it's abt fear. specifically, MAKING FUN of fear. see, fear is f.e.a.r (false evidence appearing real), so if u take fear too srsly, ull lose the game of life to the biggest biological liar (that is: fear). speaking of fear: jumpscares: they scare u bc they're sudden & thus startle u, not bc they themselves are scary. and so u calm down from ur silly brain's overreaction and laugh, bc u realise u got scared of sth that's maybe even funny or cute. THAT'S a real, good jumpscare. THAT's a HALLOWEEN STYLE jumpscare.

• the monsters. bc monster theory. to summarize: what we represent as monstrous represents what we fear, deny, reject, don't want to show or be or sometimes see in others. and so we have what? we have losing control over ourselves & manifesting our "animalistic" self (werewolves), we have regrets from the past etc (ghosts), we have stuff turning against us (frankenstein), we have psychopathic aspect of our nature that we so love to deny (take this for example: "it's not selfish, it's self-care" - it's both, and there's nothing problematic abt the fact that it's the former, only u have a problem with said former. u do u tho, as long as u dont bother others, live ur life however tf u please) (vampires), etc...

• ...and the main theme & main fear: death (zombies, and also vampires again). many of the more traditional traditions around this time of year go "aftalayf! so we gotta respect the dead [more than the living. fuck the living]!". now, i don't have a paper that'd prove my intellectual richness or cognitive fitness, but: spiritualising death is one of the forms of death denial, and death denial is a fairly big problem that's much more impactful on our everything than most are aware of (bc schools don't teach abt terror management theory -_-). it's part of why i say "no, thanks" to any religion or spiritual whatever. anyway. halloween is great bc it doesn't take death overly srsly, like all the other holidays (that are considered more respect-worthy; smh, #humans) do; it kinda confronts one with it, but in a more neutral or even humoristic way and while humor isn't the way to go bc it's still a defense mechanism & actual acceptance = no urge to joke, yt channels like ask a mortician/caitlin doughty do a pretty nice job of using humor as a nice slimy juice to make swallowing the pill of death easier. helpful at the beginning, later on should be discarded; but yeah.

so, cheers to halloween 🎃

here's some fn halloween frenzy cluttered messy chaotic wtf spree, coz joy

https://ibb.co/X7LWVhf

i wish i could find a jackolantern irl. -_- i found one, but it was not quite the color, plus it was slightly too scary/intimidating for the vibe i like for halloween. and there was no way to light it up from the inside, so hm.