“Experience is something you can’t get for nothing.”
-Oscar Wilde
At five o’clock this evening, I had stepped out of Aldi’s to wait for the bus to take me to campus, and then I looked up into the sky. Actually, I didn’t have to look up into the sky because everywhere around me already showed what had given me the kind of unexpected dread: it was very dark. It was not just an evening dark, but a pitch black appearance of night. I looked at my watch, and it was still five o’clock. For a moment, I thought that my watch had stopped, I had missed the bus, and I was stranded again in town, especially since everyone seemed to observe me with some kind of suppressed amusement as I stood at the bus stop. Actually, they were not looking at me. I have now classed it with the same standard response of momentary notice that I get every time I find myself standing in a public place, especially alone, and carrying two bags of groceries.
The point of this post however is to lament this strange darkening which I have heard about and have come to expect as a consequence of the new season of shorter daylight. I have not however been able to wrap my head around it. Whenever day begins to start one hour late, and nightfall then begins at five in the evening, it comes with a certain nervousness for which I’m not prepared. Oh, where is the comforting bosom?
The Halloween weekend went without incident, mostly because I later found out that it was seen mostly as a holiday for children and not for serious adults. I noticed this kind of indifference early enough in my apartment from my flatmates who had promised not to leave the front light on – a sign for the roaming kids that the house was closed for trick-or-treating. On Friday, I had gone into town late in the evening with a friend, and noticed how creatively many houses decorated their front porches with skeletons, ghouls and other scary stuff, including carved pumpkins with lights in them. There were kids on the road going to different houses in little plastic bags searching for candy. On their heels were parents and older ones who, as I was told, were there to keep their wards/siblings safe from prowling pranksters or children kidnappers. According to my friend, it wasn’t always like this. “Growing up in the 70s, there was not much in the news about kidnappings and the likes like we have today, and it wasn’t because the country was any safer, but because the news circuit was not as paranoid.” She said. “We went out at night trick-or-treating, and came back at dawn, alone and without our parents, and it was much more fun.”
At her own house, where she lives with her mother, a professor from the University, the front porch light was also turned off, and the only glow outside were two carved lighted pumpkins. We rang the doorbell and she went to hide behind one of the shrubs while I put up the shrillest imitation of children as soon as her mother approached the door from inside the house, and said “trick-or-treat!” If she was amused by our prank as soon as she opened the door, I couldn’t notice it as much as I saw her urgency to return to the basement where she was working on the computer. In short, I could say that for many people with even a modicum of maturity, especially those without preteen children, Halloween has become nothing but just a weekend of lights and irritating kids.
On Saturday was the Halloween parade at downtown Edwardsville, arguably the biggest celebration for the day. According to legend, it features a parade of the craziest costumes in the area. I had put the parade in my plans since earlier in the week, but when the time came, nature played it tricks-or-treat on my ailing flesh. I did not treat myself to a good sleep for hours preceding the parade, and my body tricked me into sleep. But wait, that was not why I didn’t go. Here is a better excuse: It was cold, and I couldn’t ride downtown in the inclement weather. Ben could have driven us there, Mafoya and I (who had made the plan together), but Ben himself was at St. Louis at the time, so we had no choice but to stay indoors and wait for news from those who went.
In the end, the news wasn’t so enticing anyway. The parade started late, the costumes were not so spectacular, and it was too dark to take good pictures. So there. The only pictures I will boast of from the All Saints Weekend were the ones I took some days before then, while messing around with an old mask. And of course with the large witch hat that I tried on while at Prof Rudy’s house on Sunday. His wife had worn it in the house during their bridge-playing session, and was gracious enough to lend me for a few seconds photo opportunity. She looked better in it though, and I wish I could put up her picture instead of mine. But without her permission, how could I? I think the main reason why I didn’t eventually dress up as a Pirate of the Carribbean was because I didn’t do my shopping early enough. And by the time I got to Khol’s on Friday, all they had were children’s costumes, and the workers looked at me strangely when I asked them if they had anything for adults to wear on Halloween. Oh well, I’m not a kid anymore. Or am I?
“Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute.“
– Gil Stern
No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it facinating.
– Harold Rosenberg
It won’t take a genius to know that we will have snow here in Edwardsville sooner than expected. It’s not in the forecasts yet, and no tv station is screaming for schools to prepare for a downpour, but from the feel of the weather this evening, from the descending fog and the moisture in the air, I am convinced beyond doubt that it will be any moment now. It feels like late December in Ibadan. It feels like Harmattan in Jos. It feels like that drizzling night at Eldoret, with the four of us in that campus residence, playing chess, taunting each other, finding all what we could to deal with our individual absences. It was cold then as it is now, only that now, there is no rain. Only a gradually freezing temperature with a damp feel, and the trees have all shed their leaves.
I think of the animals. The squirrels behind and around my apartment have been coming out more incessantly nowadays to shop for food. Even for them, it is only a matter of time before the freezing cold, and the outpouring of snow will send them to perpetual hibernation. The herd of deer that I see every other day on my way to the University will also have the environment to deal with. The forest is naked of leaves, and only thin branches and stems stand there. They would most likely have to move to a different environment, except of course the University authorities declare a hunting season – which is already long overdue by now anyway, and allow interested parties to take the animals down.
Fall will be packing up soon, and winter will be here. I can’t wait. Bring it on.