It’s getting colder here. I wake up and turn down the AC, google tactics on door-to-door sales (that’s part of what I do now for my day job). Through my living room window, I hear the roll of tires on pavement make way for the morning.
I find comfort in the brief screeches of brakes outside our corner home as I hunch over this keyboard, hair in a ratboi bun, coddled in a Mickey Mouse sweater, eyes still blurry behind glasses so large they practically eat my face while my ears take in these subtle reminders of the outside world.
I love these reminders of my newfound outside world. The outside world here is tangible, whereas elsewhere it’s often felt obscenely distant, with dissonance. Although the air in mid-October Texas gets chilly, the community is always warm. San Marcos is vibrant with an undercurrent of peacefulness, it is sparkling with curiosity, and local footsteps all echo with genuine neighborly support. As I water the front yard, I send out blessings of gratitude with each water drop.
On my corner, I often catch waves and smiles from our neighbors as they pull up to stop before exiting our shared little street, before spilling out to the main road that will take them like fish in a current to their errands and joys and explorations of the day. Overlooking this main thoroughfare, I set up a spooky shadow puppet display in the window for runners and walkers who move in dark hours, for the students making their way to and fro the bus stops beneath the stars, for car passengers peering out their windows… I hope to catch their delight. I hope they question the narrative.
This puppet image has also become the mascot for our October backyard spooky film screening. We are hosting a series of good ol’ thriller flicks here for the community every Thursday in October. How we’ve gotten the word out is largely through these little fliers:
I am a tangible sort of artist, and my partner, Alan, is a film/tech type. It makes a fun combo when our sources combine. He saw my cardboard creature, had a neat idea, and here we are! I adore the posters and particularly love the short video byte he made with it, peep that here.
We hosted our first event last Thursday and it was a hit. Not a massive amount of guests, but perfect for where we are at. I’m sure the word will spread and it will continue to grow. Everyone left very spooked and surprised and satisfied. Goals! We had a few college kids who saw the posters on our fence, a couple of punk types who caught word at the local coffee shop, “Wake the Dead,” some neighbors who we met going door-to-door, and some circus friends who came down from Austin.
We snuggled up together and watched “Wait Until Dark,” a 1967 film by Terence Young starring Audrey Hepburn. She plays a recently blinded woman who three con artists terrorize. It is well-paced, builds wonderful suspense, and evokes unsettling questions around trust. I was worried it’d be a bit long for an outdoor experience with strangers, but it was perfect. I was also worried about Hepburn playing this particular role… but she earned a nomination for an Academy Award for her performance, which she very much deserved. I recommend the film, to say the least!
Besides the moving picture entertainment, I created a lot of little spaces throughout the place for people to experience the spooky nature of this season. All out of up-cycled trash from our move. Styrofoam, cardboard, etc., etc.
My favorite spooky corner is the bathroom and journey to! Following a bloody trail indoors, visitors will discover the office of a secretary psychopath. As they make their way through the shadowy, colorful, witchy creator’s lab they’ll find glowing green balloons and puppets leering behind dead bodies. A cowgirl haunts the corner, and hand-painted signs point them along their way. As the pursuit of draining their bladders pulls guests past a wooden desk for demonic work, they’ll turn the corner to find that most of the bowels of the home are protected by biO-HaZaRd / CAUTION DO NOT CROSS warnings strung about amidst dilapidated fabric and hellish posters of monsters with googly eyes. Yes, GOOGLY EYES! (DuN dUn dUN!)
In the bathroom, the victim will discover a clown’s vanity with masks, gloves, and red nose decor looming above severed appendages piled up on the counter, a counter stained with blood from the grasping hands of fools who attempted escape.
Hem, hem… I took the opportunity to hang this rather large painting of mine.
I also created a couple of spooky vignettes to be seen either sitting on or standing at the toilet.
Sickly green balloons tickle the ceiling while colored lights scooped from Spirit Halloween splash darkness in creepy corners.
Next year I hope to attain a fog machine and a shadow-puppet display for the shower.
It feels delicious to create for my new neighbors, to offer experiences, and to use my powers to bridge communities of all kinds once again. Someone on Instagram this week commented on how they can’t believe I am in Texas, “Like a unicorn in the city.”
How thoroughly I disagree.
I feel I am finally finding my place in this world, and I am so grateful for it. I do feel very alone in a lot of ways, but isn’t that the post-pandemic norm? It is for me, anyway. I was surrounded by people all weekend as I clowned for Austin City Limits and still found time to cry alone backstage as I grieved the people in Iran who have been and are being so violently wronged.
Navigating our day-to-day while balancing dutiful awareness of what goes on in this world outside of our immediate bubbles will always taste like medicine with a spoonful of salt. However sour, however bitter, however disconcerting, it is essential that we find this balance nonetheless. We must acknowledge not only the sugar of this world but also the pain. Lest we become so blind that we lose sight of our right to taste the sweetness life has to offer us.
After being ousted from the theaters in California for not getting a vaccination, I am grateful to be able to perform and create freely for the people here in Texas.
I love my neighbors and am finding the flavor of renewed joy at last—a true gift after these years of doom and gloom and isolation in a pandemic-stricken Los Angeles. Yet still, I will grieve. I will experience my joy, and I will still honor the grief that grips this world.
It is not over, this era of catastrophe. The vileness of the larger agenda has seeped so deeply into our roots that we will never shake it, and turning a blind eye will only seal the peril of increasing perhapses.
You have been told many lies. Some run so deep, even the rocks and roots now believe them. To untangle it all would all but require the creation of a new world. But that is something only the gods can do. And I am no god. At least... not yet.
- Spoken by Adar in The Rings of Power, Season 1, Episode 4
I do not intend to chase any willful notions of untangling it all, but I do choose to believe that we can be better as large masses of people living together here on this plane. So I persist in revealing the messiness in doses I can manage and humbly un-doing the knots I locate while training my tools to be ever more adept at dismantling the systems I find myself caught in.
One tool I haven’t given much attention to is the one of healthy relaxation. Productive re-charge. Setting myself up for stand-alone experiences that are stress-free and truly leave my addiction to anxiety and patterns of depressive tendencies by the wayside.
As Alan left for work, he asked me what I would do for myself today. It almost brought me to tears. How lucky I am for the allowance I have in this life to do things for myself. How little I use it… how much I devote every moment of my days to some form of active skill-crafting only rested by active disassociation.
In honor of this life, I will find 30 minutes to spend with the trees today. Besides being with nature, everything else is never quite just for me. I’d like to find some more things that are just for me. What do you do that is just for you? How do you celebrate the bonheur de vivre? How do you honor your grief?
Blessings and love,
Julia