Hello everyone. Long time no see. I apologize for this lost upload: I messed up royally yesterday and had to repost it. (My thanks to Johnny M who left a comment: I saw it in its entirety before I accidentally deleted several of my images.) It was time to come back and say hello. I'll comment on all you in the next few weeks. I'm very slow right now, but I'll get to you all. I'll have to do representative comments (I've been away too long to comment on everything), but I'll give you my best, I promise. This tale was written in the middle of the night...I hope it flows. Thanks for always being so kind to me whenever I return. You're all dear. And I wish you all a wonderful Halloween/Samhain/Day of the Dead (dias de los muertos, if any of you are Mexican!), and so on. Hope your autumns are going wonderfully. Have a wonderful November, thanks for stopping by, and peace and inspiration to you all, Mark ------------------ A Halloween Vision The wind howled through the prairie like a pack of raging wolves: It moaned, roared and rushed around you like a gust of crazed spirits, whizzing past you and thrusting into the distance...And I, who came here with my friends---we were all in our early teens with a night of trick or treating ahead of us, including a stash of candy and other sugar-laden treats we hoped would last us the whole year---stood there alone, utterly lost, no clue how to get out of there or even where to find a simple sidewalk, while nature whooshed around me in a blasting convention, roaring, possessed and very dangerous. On top of that, the prairie itself creaked and crackled---it had frozen the week before, and the grasses were now brittle like shards of glass; and they made the most godawful scraping-sound every time you passed them. I kept thinking, 'please let me get out of here alive...please.' Sounds silly (it was just the prairie), but with grasses 5 feet high, no clearing to be found, and Halloween above all, I felt total doom. 'Don't show it fear,' I thought, as if it were a beast. Well, it was. This place was alive. The grasses slapped me now, whapping me in the face like a series of hard wallops. They stung! I had to get out of here. "Help!" I cried. (Silence.) "Helllllllppp!" I cried. (More silence.) "Fuck!" I yelled. "I'm screwed!" Now. Being 13, yelling 'fuck' at the top of one's lungs was a rare treat. How often could you do that at home? Or school? Or anywhere? I thought, 'I just yelled fuck in public---and no one heard me!' So, being 13, I yelled it over and over: "Fuck, fuck, fuck." I boomed it, I bellowed it; and why not? How many times would I be able to do this without my parents or teachers or god-knows-who coming down on me like a ton of bricks? "Fuck!" I screamed: "You heard me: Fuck!" God, it felt good. I grabbed a sheath of prairie grass: "Fuckkkkkkkkkk!" This, ladies and gentlemen, was liberation. But: One stabbing slap across the face from an unusually ornery sheath, and I was back in prairie hell, tangled and tied-up while the grasses whapped me from every side, my jacket ripping, the sheaths cutting right to my skin, cutting me over and over no matter how hard I yanked away. And not only did the cuts sting, but they bled. Was I going to bleed to death now? And if you ask me how did I know they 'bled'---since it was impossible to see blood in this deep-of-night---I knew because I felt the hot liquid rushing under my clothes. 'Eeeeuuuuwwww,' I thought:That's blood, dammit. Get me the hell outa here! Then, in defiance: "Thanks!" I cried---to the moon: "Big help you are!" (The moon's supposed to provide light, right?) The grasses were 5 feet tall, the wildflowers where showering dried petals and stamen-dust everywhere, and that dumb moon-face (ugh) just stared at me in derision. "Fuck you!" I yelled. No one answered. But I meant it. I trudged on. Whoosh! Some creature just rushed by my side. What was it? I turned everywhere. It had to be huge, 'cause I felt it along my shoulder. ('That weren't no spider!' I thought.) What could be that tall in the outskirts of Chicago? It wasn't like we had mountain lions out here. Gangsters, yeah---but mountain lions? "Show your face, you varlet!" I cried. I had no clue what 'varlet' meant, but I'd heard it on TV. (Turns out it meant "boy attendant," which was way disappointing. But there was no to correct my vocabulary...) "Fuck!" I cried once more. To top it off, the prairie had now become a sea of swaying grasses, wildly sweeping back and forth as if in a prayer meeting. I was creeped out. "I'll be here all night!" I shouted: "My parents will put out a watch for me (the National Guard, maybe the CIA) (humor me, I was 13), my friends are filling their faces with Mars Bars, Snickers, Milky Ways (and other clumps of the pre-healthy age when kids ate enough sugar to power a locomotive), and I'm alone in the middle of a prairie hurricane, getting whapped to death by sheaths of I-don't-know-what, with no clue of how to get out of here or if I even could." So I sat. "Stay close to the ground," went through me: "You'll get hit less". But---trade-off---the ground was frigid, the sheaths still slapped me, and now I had to contend with earth-creatures scuttling all around me. Wonderful. "Hello," I said. "I'm Mark. And you?" The rude little shits that they were, they didn't utter a word. So I rested against a rough sheath of grass, the wildflowers---desiccated to the point of being weapons, now---blew tons of dried whatevers onto my head and into my eyeballs. I closed my eyes---protection---and fell asleep. Finally... * * * I woke; had no idea what time it was. The world was still now---peace---while the moon shone like a ball of white fire, and the light---that inimitable exquisite light of the moon on a cloudless autumn night---almost blinded me. It was breathtaking. The prairie utterly bathed you now, the creaking of sheaths becoming a well-spaced chorus of grass-prayers and holy-whoops in the now endless dark...I stood, staggered, grabbed a sturdy sheath, and muttered: "My god, the whole world's at peace!" Then it dawned on me: My family would be hysterical by now! It had to be after midnight, snd this was before cellphones: no way to contact my parents, not even by screaming. They probably had a search party out for me: I mean it was pitch black, it was Halloween---when the spirits of the dead come back to beg for redemption---my parents had to be hysterical by now. Great. What do I do. Realizing I had to wait until morning---when I could see---I rested against a rock, and closed my eyes. Suddenly: Rustling. What was that? A sudden chill ran over me. I saw an opening, and approached it: My god, it was a human! He sat there, crouched over, holding his stomach in pain, enveloped in deep privacy. "I---------" I began to talk; then stopped. He leapt up, and jumped backwards. His was terrified. "Go away!" he rasped. "Who are you?" I cried. He gazed at me with heart-rending terror, leaned forward, and whispered: "I'm you. Do you understand? I'm you, only many centuries later. You're dead where I come from. Passed. Oh my..." Omg. Was this a dream? What was happening? "It's not a dream," he rasped: "I'm you. Look!" He came close: It was me. Those features, those proportions, that head---it was me! He stared into me with the most pitiful gaze---the deceased me looking at the living me: My legs buckled. What had I done? Why the pained gaze? Was this how the dead viewed the living---on this hallowed e'en of all evenings? I was confronted with a stranger who I knew intimately yet I'd never seen him before: ever. It was the most uncomfortable and excruciating recognition I'd had in my life. "Who are you!" I insisted. "Tell me!" He dropped his head in sadness: "I've been dead many, many years..." (He said this as if it were a crime to be dead. This was excruciating.) "I'm you," he continued, "long after you passed. You've crossed some strange line coming here. I'm very sorry..." "God," I cried: "But---no: Prove it!" I grabbed him: "Prove it! Please!" He pointed: In a clearing, I saw everyone I ever knew and loved, hovering over a fire; while, In the horizon, many others wafted in silhouette against the moonlight. It was a procession of my entire life, the faces, the voices, the dreams, the sighs...all dead now, all passed on and shining in the shadows. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to do. He walked to the assembled: They turned to me, and bowed. (Bowed? Why bow? I didn't do anything!) Then they stepped up, as if stepping onto a stepping stool---but there was no stool there: just air. They positioned themselves on a shelf of pure air, jostled around until they got their footing; then---glowing a hot white against the pitch black sky---they wafted into the horizon, singing as they went, swaying back and forth until they got far enough away that they turned into a huge ball of light. Then, in a flash, they burnt so bright I thought an atomic bomb had gone off; after which the light exploded into countless bursts which flew into the sky and took their place across the cosmos,, where they shone. My god. I stood there, gaping, pondering which were my life mates and which were mere stars. Then I realized: None were 'mere stars': All of them were the remnants of lives on earth...maybe all lives on earth, going back to the beginning. Lanterns in the night, candles in the infinite solitude. Have I just seen all of humanity? Is that what this was all about? Then, slowly---as always happens in life---the chimera of this 'vision' began to dissolve. I slowly transitioned back to the reality of the day-to-day; the sky became just 'the sky'; and I stretched, took a deep breath, gazed one more time into the sky---for a sign---but nothing. Just the stars. I brushed myself off, and tried to comprehend what'd just happened. But wait: I found the edge of the prairie! My town stared back at me (now in deep slumber). The sun was just beginning to make its way to the horizon; and I thought: 'Was this real? Or just a dream?' The prairie'll do that to you, I mean come on. Come here at night: You'll see. It's imbued. It's got spirits...Especially on Halloween... * * * I stood at the road, stepped onto the concrete (whoosh---a car rushed by), and started home. And, before entering my home (where I could see my mother sitting in the living room, wringing her hands), I peeked through the canopy of trees that were everywhere where we lived, hoping to get one last glimpse of those lights who claimed to be my 'life': They winked. Say I'm delusional, but I'm telling you: They winked. One star even waved. All true. I waved back, but it ignored me... Then the warming breeze of morning blew in my face, filled with the autumn scent of sweet flowers encased in frigid winds. The sun now eeked its way over the horizon like a dog coming out of slumber and sniffing for food. And Halloween was over...and this morning, freezing as it was, promised to be one of the most magical of my life... * * *