October 3, 2023

 Greetings Everyone!

It is the first week of October. Ray Bradbury, who can be considered as the patron saint of October, describes the last day of the month in his book The Halloween Tree—a book that adults as well as children should read to get into the spirit of this timeless season.

It was the afternoon of Halloween.

And all the houses shut against a cool wind.

And the town full of cold sunlight.

But suddenly, the day was gone.

Night came out from under each tree and spread...Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows’ Eve. Everything seemed cut   from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like  the plumes of funeral parades.                                                                      

These words seem to be permeated with death.  The cold wind; the velvet cerements; the funeral plumes; all of these seem to be a threat.

But Halloween is not about death.  It is about life.

The candle burning in the jack o’ lantern is life and, perhaps, the celebration of the everlasting life to come after death. 

JLS  

September 21, 2023

Greetings Everyone!

Autumn is here!  My favorite season, and right around the corner, October—my  favorite month!

I’ve got a new book coming out the first of the new year.  I’ll provide more information about that in November and December.  The title is Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird Tales, published by Bloomsbury, the #1 academic publishing firm in the UK and the US.  The book is available in both hardcover and paperbound and it can be pre-ordered now on Google, Amazon, and numerous other sites and bookstores. 

Ray Bradbury describes autumn in his book The October Country  as:

“That country where it is always turning late in the year.  That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay.  That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun.  That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts.  Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain....”

In another book, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Bradbury warns us against the autumn people, whom he claims are soulless, evil things that seek to ensnare humans.  But Bradbury is wrong about that.

For there are autumn people who have souls & are not evil; they love autumn & celebrate the death of the year & the renewal that always follows.

JLS

Merry Christmas Everyone! 

December 8, 2022

There was a west in ancient days, a place for the west wind and for the raging sea, and the ancients named the sea the Ancient of Days and put him in a blue robe, safely anthropomorphic.

But the Gods of the Earth knew the sea as Leviathan.

There was a east in ancient times; the sun rose there and so, the sun was thought of as immortal by those who should have known better.  But things always seem to rise in the east no matter what we think we can do about it. 

And we really can’t do anything about it except talk and notice and hope and pray: “Yes!  The sun will rise!  Yes, the sun must rise!”

But there is still the west, the Ancient of Days.  And there is still the east, waiting for the sun that will surely rise, not because it must, but because humans need it so much.

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November 21, 2022

 In isolation, we often can see the truth of something that has plagued our minds with doubt and inconsistency. Today, I see young people and older people becoming increasingly isolated.

They stare down at the screens of their smart phones as though hypnotized, irrespective of where they are, or whatever they are doing. They could be sitting on the white sands of a beach, a gorgeous sunset taking place right in front of them, and they can't be bothered to lift their eyes to glance at it.  If they are sitting on that beach with others, the others are, likewise, hypnotized by their glowing screens.

Is this a bad thing?  I really don't know, but I can't say that I disapprove.

 Isaac Asimov argued that we, as a culture, are evolving into a specialized form of human beings known as "Spacers", who prefer living alone on large plantations on other planets, attended by hundreds of robots, but keeping other humans at bay, and unwilling to engage in any human contact except by phone, or computer monitor.

It is possible that we may be seeing, perhaps, the emergence of the spacer in our own time and on our own world. 

For more speculations such as these, please check out my two books; they are both committed to seeing the truth of things that have plagued human minds with doubt & inconsistency.

JLS

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 Happy Halloween Everyone!

October 30, 2022

 Greetings Everyone!

The last week of October!

Before ending my series of October postings, it is only fitting to cite Edgar Allan Poe, an autumn person to the roots of his heart & soul. 

In his greatest poem “Ulalume”, Poe describes the October dream-scape that his narrator is journeying through on his way to a mysterious destination.  It is clear that this nightmarish experience is taking place on Halloween night.

The skies they were ashen and sober;

The leaves they were crisped and sere-

The leaves they were withering and sere:

It was night, in the lonesome October

Of my most immemorial year:

It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,

In the misty mid region of Weir:-

It was down by the dark tarn of Auber,

In the ghoul-haunted woodland  of Weir.

The narrator encounters weird visions- including the “specter” of a planet- a ghost planet! – and ends up standing before the tomb of his beloved- the Lady Ulalume.

The narrator has been tricked by the woodland ghouls into a confrontation with Death.   And this is the ultimate Halloween trick or treat!

JLS