Dating Dread...

In class last night, we were discussing (among other things) Clive Barker's short story "Dread." It is a personal favorite, which means that I fully expect my students to hate it. Surprisingly, that did not happen. They quite liked it.

If you've not read the story (collected in the wonderful Books of Blood and many anthologies), you should. It's the story of Steve, a college student who falls in with a man called Quaid. Quaid is interested in fear, in dread, and he enjoys finding out what people are most afraid of them and thrusting them into a situation where they are forced to confront that fear. He hopes his experiments will allow him to learn about dread and how to fight it so that he can use it against his own fear-being axed to death by an evil clown.

As we were discussing the story, one of the guys, Dennis, started delivering his analysis in a creepy, meant-to-sound-like-psycho-Quaid voice. Immediately, one of the girls in the class, Mary, said, "Ooo, stop that."

"Stop what?" Dennis asked with a mischievous grin on his face, still doing the Quaid voice.

"Stop it with the voice already," she said. "It's disturbing." There was a pause, a beat or two maybe when there was silence, and then she said, "Are you seeing anyone?"

Of course, everyone started laughing. Which continued when I said that I had a strict no dating between students policy. Actually, I wish I could have one, because when it has happened, it inevitably ends badly.

And I thought (though I did not say), that what she said sounded a lot like something I would say: "Hey, you are kinda demented. Wanna go out and grab a cup of chai?"

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year...

I love Halloween. I love the crispness in the air, love the leaves, thick and pungent, crackling with red and orange and gold. I love pumpkins and bats and spiders. I love scaring people and being scared. I love the dark and creatures of the dark.

This morning started out as the perfect Halloween. The air had a bite to it, and the sky was the color of pumpkins and smoke. All I needed was the mournful tolling of a single bell and the south of leathery wings frantically flapping to make the mood complete. The rest of the day was quite ordinary, though the night is young, and I still hold out some hope for holiday magic.

Two years ago, I spent Halloween evening watching a pair of movies (can't recall which) appropriate to the day. Because of my film immersion, it was close to midnight when I walked my dachshund, and when I went outside, the air was thick with a chilly fog. It swirled on the surface of the lake just outside my building and combed through the feathers of swans so white they almost seemed to glow. Usually, on foggy nights, the sky is brooding and overcast. It's almost like the clouds are dragging their bellies against the earth. But not this night.

The fog became thinner and thinner as it rose into a sky that was the perfect blue of a shadowed sapphire. A sky that was sprinkled with stars. I stood on the shore of the lake under a small tree. The leaves were part green, part orange-gold, like copper that has started to turn. They were lightly furred with frost.

Everything was still. Quiet. Muffled. A swan lifted its dripping beak from the lake. Expectant....

Then I saw a shooting star. I may have seen others when I was a child, but this is the only one I can remember. It crossed the sky in a lazy arc and filled me with a joy that burned cold and clean.

Nights like that teach us what wonder is. They teach us magic.

Happy Halloween!

A Vampire Poem...

Because it's Halloween, here is a vampire poem, also from long, long ago. It was published in the now defunct Midnight Zoo.

This one was inspired by a trip to the Louvre. In the Egyptian section, they had sprays of dried flowers that looked rather like small, bone-yellow baby's breath. According to the exhibit information sign, the blossoms were called immorteles, the everlasting flower. So I jotted that down in my notebook, and one day, it became a poem.

When I first wrote the poem, I saw the speaker as a male vampire speaking to a dead female lover, but typing it fresh tonight from an old hard copy, I rather had the sense that it was a female vampire speaking to a dead male lover.

( The Garland of Immorteles )