Fall reminds us that life’s short and getting shorter. Maybe that’s why we all get in drag in October and stuff ourselves silly in November and pile gifts on one another in December. We’re not stupid. We know how to have fun.

The garden is put to bed. The state park is closed. The sun sets earlier and earlier. Time for reading and crafts and deep thots. Like: what to wear on Halloween? I love when kids roll old-school and you can tell what they are (astronaut, umpire, cowgirl) without having to know a (modern) cartoon or kiddie movie, and I dig adult attire that mystifies the young people (Ben Hur, say, or The Hunchback of Notre Dame…cue the Million Dollar Movie theme…on WOR-9!,) plus dual costumes you can’t buy in a store (Napoleon and Josephine; John Snow and Ygritte – “Archery Kit Not Included”; more).

Some columnists didn’t get their September column in on time and important events went uncovered. Like the New World Festival (magnifique!), the Tunbridge World’s Fair (kudos, 4-H’ers, Ambassadors, and handicapped transpo!), and a spectacular foliage season. Hopefully Dear Reader was too busy having fun to notice this humble column’s absence; New Englanders read weekly papers with listings of aws local goings-on and load their calendars accordingly. As a friend’s sage older brother commented recently on life, “It’s all experiences and relationships.” His point being, I imagine, that resumes and possessions don’t matter so much. Unless it’s a big old Heath Bar sliding into my orange plastic jack-o’-lantern. That matters. Treat, please!

One treaty experiential idea a brilliant friend had: get together with other people that like to sing for a singing weekend. If you’re like us, you’ll talk and hoot more than you sing, but you’ll have the time of your life. I offered a name for ours: Croonfest. Because of our age, a soprano quickly countered with Cronefest. An alto suggested, in an unrelated conversation, a new reality show: Keeping Up With The Kevorkians. Which is what many wish the Kardashians would do. Anyway, your weekend will go like that, with some actual singing thrown in. I highly recommend.

Is the planet in utter turmoil? Pretty much. Are we on rubbery ground economically? Maybe. But when I had connections to the “monument” industry, I’d planned to buy my tombstone, inscribed in advance except for the final date.  It was to say, perhaps with an etching of a beacon, “I remain hopeful.”  Not only because that rich irony would give the occasional visitor (and naughty graveyard shennaniganer on All Saints’ Eve) a snicker, but because I do in fact remain hopeful. You know how, even if stuck in nasty traffic, when you think of someone you love, like a pet or child or your aunts, your whole chest cavity feels good, and then you smile and your face feels good? Humans have this universal response ‘round the globe. That’s something. And so I remain hopeful.

A friend who is Dialed In to otherworldly sources had this to say: we on earth are being summoned now to let go of the past and do things a new way, with joy. That means, to me, not doing things (experiences and relationships) you don’t want to do that make you feel mostly crappy, whether for dollars or out of some sense of obligation. Actions initiated with unpleasant thoughts behind them never turn out right; the energetic impetus is all wrong. Yuh-oh, am I waxing cosmic on Dear Reader?! Well. If not on the Eve of All Saints, with its possibly pagan progenitor, the Feast of the Lemures, when then?

Dust off your figurative orange plastic jack-o’-lantern, polish your conceptual horn of plenty, and fill ‘em up, with the best “treats” – experiences and relationships. Is effort involved? Nice work if you can get it, I say. Don’t waste a minute on any that bring you misery, like the awful Mary Jane candies one neighbor routinely forced on us in the 60s. Throw those ones out, man. Keep the good ones. Re-gift the good ones. Good cross-dressing, and good day.

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