Halloween night and I walk alone through the electric dark in the company of my own private ghosts, more frightening by far than any ghouls, real or imagined, that I may have encountered in so-called "real" life. Haunted thoughts and ghosts of ancient pains, what have you taught me? Only that if I still had a heart, I would want it to be like yours.
Suddenly I am reminded of a time long, long ago. First grade recess and the first stunned contemplation of my own emerging consciousness and thus of my own mortality. An awakening! Aside from the extra large coffee and iPod earbuds, I realize that my current mental playground neatly mirrors the thoughts and feelings of my little 5-year old self, standing alone at recess on a cool Autumn morn. The day that I awoke to the knowledge that everything is always changing. When I awoke to find that I was both devestated by and in awe of the Earth, people, life...everything!
It makes me wonder if my recent quest for detachment and sobriety and always truth, truth, truth...if my recent reduction both physically and emotionally might be spurned by some subconscious desire to go back to that state of mind I left behind me at 5 years old. Be a simpler kind of man. Perhaps turn back the clock and be like all the other little kids. Take back the Pariah in me....
So yes, whenever I walk alone on Halloween or anytime in the Fall, I feel haunted. Not by any ghosts but those of my own design.
For the record, I don't believe that I *am* trying to regress, or even have a real desire to do so, except perhaps as one step on a path of progression...If I need to find and recreate all that I once was in order to evolve into whatever I've yet to become, so be it. It is an occasionally painful and frightening process, but one that is not without it's own rewards.
I don't want to be like the others. I just need to be more and more like myself. If I can someday know what that is. It shouldn't be too hard.
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