taking the long way to the pumpkin patch

only a few days before halloween and 8 days before the election and this time it is scary. or so it seems. tho i have hope like i've not had in a long time regarding the election. i'll just leave it at that and try to brace myself for whatever comes.

we are officially on holiday, our annual 2-week vacation, but staying home and doing some minor home projects with a few day trips interspersed. and taking it real slow. i advocate the poetics of doing very little but thinking, reading and writing. why not. nothing is more pleasurable to me than a strong cup of coffee, my laptop, the newspaper, a few dvds, and some poetry and movie books.

my mantra: LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO BE IN SUCH A HURRY.

take from it what you will.

so then anyway, anna and i spent the weekend in san jose. we took the halloween flashlight tour at the winchester mystery house. we got to keep the flashlights. when i was a wee lad my parents and brothers and i lived for a while in san jose. my dad has stories about me running around the mystery house like an antelope but i don't remember. i've not been in san jose for decades. when i told my old man friday night we were heading for san jose he told me he remembers the mystery house as an old, dilapidated victorian maze. well, it remains a victorian maze, a monument built by a woman starting in the mid-19th c. who believed in spirits who instructed her on the construction of her house. thus there are doors that open unto walls, crazy flights of stairs that lead to the same floor they start on, rooms within rooms and a single seance room where she took her instruction. plus sarah winchester was into numerology, the number 13 was her special number, many rooms had 13 windows and the ceilings were put together with 13 panels, and spiderwebs so that windows were cross-hatched with spiderweb designs.

it is said that the house is haunted. i can't vouchsafe that information but being the nut that i am for the paranormal when anna told me last month that she bought tickets for the flashlight tour i was beside myself in anticipation. what surprised me about the house is its location. the mystery house is over 6 acres but it is now in the center of a huge shopping mall and movie theaters. and it is touristy as hell. but once on the tour, and the flashlight tour is just that, lights turned out with only a flashlight for illumination, you lose your bearings. the rooms are tiny and the ceilings are low, while the staircases wind and wind into a veritable no where. the sensation is often one of vertigo. unlike most houses, where you know exactly where you sit or stand in relation to its construction, the mystery house has your mind reeling in confusion.

we had a blast. the night tours were small and the crowds very light. afterward we wandered thru the gardens where we were able to orient ourselves in relation to the massive size of the house. it was easy to forget the city right outside the gates. no, i didn't see any ghosts, but that wasn't because of lack of trying. whenever possible i would enter a room alone without the aid of my flashlight. i discovered i can scare myself pretty well, but not because of the presence of the paranormal. in the end, the house is the residue of a vanished era that believed the dead were always among us.

perhaps, they still are. it is after all halloween and dias de los muertos.

boo