PrettyFakes

Can you smell it? Sugary vomit and scorched pumpkins?

Have you ever wondered why Halloween always feels like such a relief? I think it’s because Halloween is the one time of year when we’re allowed to admit freely the truth that we strive so desperately to conceal the rest of the year: that the faces we present to the world are not real but are in fact only masks. At least, that’s how I’ve always felt about it. Maybe that’s just my disposition, or maybe it has something to do with my having been kidnapped across state lines 11 times in five years (1982-1987) by seven different family members in a particularly bitter custody dispute. Halloween was the one day out of the year I didn’t have to remember if I was “Billy Ledlow” or “Terrence Forthright” or “Louise Dybukkson”; instead I could just be Batman, Casper, or Princess Leia. Of course, it was easier on me than on my brother. I was just along for the ride, but he was the real object of contention: After he brought a dead barn cat back to life, the family fractured into warring factions, some of whom heralded him as a great prophet and some of whom insisted he was the Antichrist. I remember he tried to set them straight by explaining that the Bible doesn’t even really mention an Antichrist, but his explanation had just the opposite of the effect he intended, mostly because A) he was only 18 months at the time and B) he was speaking in Latin.

I never really picked a side myself. I’ve always said that cat was just asleep, and those marks on his scalp could just as easily have read “999,” right? Plus, I’m pretty sure he was only speaking pig latin. Which is still impressive for an 18-month-old. In any case, it’s good that those dark days are behind us (although—you didn’t hear this from me—if Quentin Forthright gets elected general secretary of the United Nations, you’re gonna want to watch out for falling planes and driverless cars.) Still, I find myself forgetting who I’m supposed to be sometimes. I long for that day soon to come (“soon” in geological or eschatological terms) when we will all be quantum nomads, a state we will only attain once every place in America has become so indistinguishable from every other place that the universe simply loses track of us. We will go to sleep in one bed in Duluth, Minnesota and wake up in a suburb of Orlando, Florida, but what will be the difference? Who can even remember which bed in which town we started out in? It will be amazing how quickly we’ll all accept this turn of events. It will be even more amazing how quickly we forget that life was ever any different. Of course, the universe runs on some pretty advanced software, so the identical nature of everyplace will have to go beyond the physical and right down to the soul: what we think, what we want, what we dream about.

So, I give it about 10 years.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 3:57 pm and is filed under In the Nation, Professor Fury. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.