My first Halloween

One of the silliest things a Hebrew school teacher ever said to my class was that we should not go trick-or-treating on Halloween, because ultimately it’s a Pagan holiday and we are forbidden to celebrate Pagan holidays.  Not that this stopped me, of course…while I found it slightly chilling, perhaps, that Halloween had its roots in Paganism, it clearly had no religious significance of any kind anymore.  Or so I thought.

Tonight I will participate in my first Samhain ritual.  I first heard the word Samhain at Interlochen, from Drew or Alannah, Drew who said he was a Druid and Alannah who said she was a Witch.  And what did we do for Samhain?  Very little.  Drew and I dressed up as dead children and worked out a creepy routine and terrified the whole campus.  Alannah may have done some simple messing around.  But there was nothing that related at all to what I am learning now.  The person who would have been doing things like this was Kit…and I don’t think he and I were close yet at Halloween.

Samhain (pronounced SOW-in, in Irish Gaelic — differently in Scottish Gaelic) is a time when the veil between the worlds is thin.  Or perhaps a time when the circle of the year returns to its starting point, and the Universe steps slightly out of time, or out of linear time.  Either or both of these things make it a great time for divination and scrying, and for contacting ancestors or other departed spirits…being outside of time, we have access to both the past and the future.  I’m not sure what exactly the ritual tonight will be like — how can I know, when it’s my first one? — but I like these people and I trust these people and I have read all that I can and I want to finally live something.  Am I scared?  Well, no.  Not scared.  Nervous?  Not even nervous, exactly.  Nor apprehensive.  I am…  There were days when I was younger and still very in tune with these things, these things I am trying to recapture now, when I could feel a thickness in the air, an anticipation, and I’d walk around the whole day saying that something was coming, something was happening.  That is where I am now.  I am in anticipation.

It’s kind of amazing how much information there is about Wicca and Neo-Paganism available today.  I always sort of thought that it would be hard even to learn about it…if anything, the problem is wading through the vast amounts of stuff to the useful things.  As Adam said once, which had been my sense exactly, most of it is repetitive and the rest is crap.  At least I am beginning to know how to recognize the latter.

It is amazing to me how much I can feel it.  Samhain, I mean.  I can feel it like a dark stream of water or of cool mist in the air.  I did not expect to feel it coming this way, not until I have been doing this for much longer.  It is always a wonder to me when I can feel something at all…last week at SPIRAL, we did energy work, forming balls of energy between our hands and passing them to a partner, then receiving them back, feeling how they had been changed by the other person…my partner said that I was doing just fine, that my energy was palpable and very warm, but I only occasionally actually felt something myself.  Mary said that if we were new to the work and were ever feeling anything, it was very impressive…but I had hoped to do better.  I’m sure I’ll get it, with practice.  I find myself wishing and wishing, uselessly, that I had come to this my freshman year, with the others, and not so late.  What will I do next year?

In other news, Generals are this week…the tension in the building rises…I’ll write how that goes when I know.  My audition is tomorrow.  Danny’s auditions are Friday.  Cast lists Sunday evening.  Here we go again.

I had an unexpected house guest this weekend.  John Sebastian, a senior my freshman year, needed a place to stay, so he stayed here.  It was surprisingly good to see him.  We stayed up most of the night on Friday talking, and then went to the Halloween party together Saturday night.  I left the party early, planning to get to bed at a reasonable hour, but I wound up going home with Megan and staying there until 5:15.  (It was only 4:15 technically, because of putting the clocks back, but it felt like 5:15).  A good weekend, but a very strange weekend.

I don’t know if I’ve written about Megan yet.  She has become very important in my life, one of my best friends here, possibly my best friend here this semester.  Anna and I are very close at the moment too, but I feel so safe with Megan.  She knows about my religious shifts (so does Anna now, I told her last week and she’s fine with it, but we don’t really talk about it), she knows about Adam (I’ve done an admirable job of not talking about that)…and I know her secrets, too.  We meet once a week or so, sometimes more often, for tea and biscuits, or for a meal.  And it is good, it is very good.

Things with Adam have not changed.  We’re still in the same pattern as always, more or less.  The perfect example: one night at Rocky rehearsal (he was playing Frank — the show went well, by the way, and is over now thank goodness), he had not spoken to me, had not touched me in greeting, barely looked at me, seemed barely aware I was there.  For hours.  Then at some point, he sat down opposite me (I don’t think deliberately), and I asked him how he was.  And he came and sat very close to me, on the small block I was sitting on, and told me that he’d just found out the previous day that his mother had left his father a month ago, and that she’d been a closet alcoholic for years.  I told him that if he ever needed someone to talk to, any time of the day or night, he should call me, and he said that he thought that would probably happen.  And we talked until we had to start rehearsing again.  And then didn’t talk at all for the rest of the night.  I don’t think that he has been walking around telling everyone about this.  I may have been the only person in the room who knew, except probably Brendan.  Does this strike anyone else as odd?

He seems to be doing all right, and I haven’t received any dead-of-night phone calls (not that I would mind them), but I worry nonetheless.

We talked for a bit at the party on Saturday, sat down and talked, just us.  A nice talk, but hard to have a real conversation at Marathon.  We tried, but we were constantly interrupted.  Especially hard on Halloween, when every new arrival in the room has a costume that must be admired…oh well.  I am aware of how foolish it is to want him, and yet I find him incredibly fascinating and alluring.  So it goes.

Perhaps he will be there tonight.

I need to meet someone else.

Saturday during the day, I shot my first student film!  That was exciting.  Actually most of the time it was very dull, because they’re students too of course and everything takes five times as long as it needs to…but it was a good experience.  And the most interesting part?  They hadn’t told me who I was acting with in the scene.  Thankfully I got there ten m

inutes early, before the other actor was there yet, so I had at least a little warning that they had brought Robbie in for the weekend.  I love the fact that no one decided to tell me this earlier.  They probably didn’t know that there was a history there.  But still.  It was fine, it was nice to see him and we had a perfectly friendly afternoon, but I wish I had known in advance that he was coming.  His hair has grown out a bit, it’s curly now like Paul’s (not as long as Paul’s, but curly nonetheless), and he’s put on a bit of weight.  But he was still absolutely him, to the bone, and I enjoyed his company as much as ever.  That could have been nice, had it worked out.  Instead it was miserable.  Oh well.  I’m glad that we are at least friendly with each other, and able to talk easily.

I can’t believe how late in the year it is.  Halloween already.  I still don’t have anywhere to go for Thanksgiving…something will turn up, or I’ll go home, or I’ll stay here…we’ll see.  This is a big week, I can worry about stuff like that later.  Auditions, callbacks (if I am lucky), rehearsals starting for the next show, and my first real Halloween.

–Stephanie