Diane Arkins

Halloween is kitschy, right; I don’t know if I’ve been interested in it since I was a prepubescent person, right. (Although I vividly remember dressing up as Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars Episode I, one year: I guess that’s would have made me ten, right.) As a kid you’re like: holy shit, ~free~ candy…. 😂…. It’s like: you’re seven; when’s the last time you paid for something, right…. (shrugs) I mean, of course it’s true that money does change the lives of children in many ways, (especially when they’re dying of pediatric cancer! Lmao 😂), but, I don’t know: I can’t describe my thoughts….

But yeah: I want to Wiccify—(waves wand and creates said word)—and also read more social history, to kinda balance out the intellectual side of me, with girls/reality/the non-abstract, if that makes sense, right…. (shrugs) I tried to read some social history before, (and I certainly read novels, of course: I actually over-estimated how “restful” it is to read a “good novel”, lol…. But that’s another topic….), but you underestimate how much of it you read, when you organize your history books by nations, (which is at least better than doing it by time-period: which would be a real sink-hole, since everyone divides time up differently, right). Yeah: somehow it seems to become largely political/military, when you think of it in terms of the “nation”, right…. I actually don’t know if I’ll call this social history, at all…. I know I’ll have to delete that book, “Analyzing Survey Data about Socializing in America since 1970” (from like, 2010, right): which proved to me, that…. I mean, I tried, right: history as the non worker-in-soldier’s-uniform rank-and-file citizen, right: girls permitted to apply, right…. But yeah: basically I found out that men who design and interpret Gallup polls are as boring as fuck, right….

But yeah: I’m going to have to figure out what social history actually IS, right…. Nobody ever does that, right….

…. (starts) Yeah, it’s funny: once a year, people consider us worth of a story, or a joke, right…. A jokey sentimentalism, you know…. I knew I’d rather not have the American Empire Series: Halloween (by, a Loyal Mother!), or the Death Only Endures: Halloween (by: a man! Karl M. Mann!), but yeah: I had to go for the sentimentalism, if I’m not going to be the (toots own horn) Man of Letters, right…. I have to arrive at radicalism by the road of nervous conservatism, right…. (sigh) Maybe if I can resolve/transform some of these conflicts, next time I can get a less tortuously undecided birth-chart, right…. As below, so above….

But yeah: I do think that it’s social history, right…. Social history/history of folklore, which I guess is pretty often bound up with the holidays, right…. A lot of it is probably pretty kitschy…. Things delegated to the feminine quarter do tend to get neglected, not least intellectually; the other side of that coin is that it can be surprising how even the volunteer-y (now I’m talking about a library event I just went to: but it’s amazing how you can learn, by watching people interact, you know: how naturalistic life unfolds…. I wouldn’t listen to a talk about something I found 100% useless: but sometimes a large chunk of it—I mean you do it to be social: then you learn about…. I don’t know, how people present themselves, the rules of social interactions…. It’s hard to describe): but yeah, even in volunteer-y kinda charity/female staffed social groups, it’s surprising the extent to which things are male-run, and kinda organized around male-hierarchical-rationality principles, you know…. I don’t know: even the most charitable enterprises implicitly contain the most subtle moral quandaries: but people don’t like talking about moral quandaries, you know: they want to hear about numbers and science; they want to be a man…. But yeah: that does kinda have interesting suggestions for the nature of folklore, right: women aren’t taught to lead—so then the feminine-sphere (and folklore and party-customs and things can kinda fall into that) has a tendency to simply collapse into a certain…. I don’t know: it’s sad that people are trained to satisfy the censors, right—but there’s a certain mental collapse: the males ought to talk, instead of us; and also a sort of kowtow-romanticism: although in that case, the media/recorded picture can be quite deceptive: people make more or less as much kowtow-romanticism stories as ever, not least movies directed by men, right—but girls in real life neither feel safe (either from anti-romantic moralists, or indeed from rapists), to go around kowtowing, nor indeed are necessarily inclined to kowtow~ since the male romantic dream, (and I guess the female pride in…. Servicing the wheels of the world, right: maybe you feel important, almost) be damned: in real life, it only brings dishonor and gossip and snipping-insults, snippery, from both males and females, right…. But yeah: Edwardian/Early Jazz Age romantic folklore delusions, and—I know in real life, right: females do discipline children and pets and all sorts of social inferiors, right, for the sake of the male-led hierarchy, right—I don’t know how much of that comes through in the written record, right…. And yes: some of the old lore of Samhain/Halloween as the best time for divination came through the centuries, and got applied to the workaday needs of practicality, albeit in this…. “Little Girl Blue”, you know, passive self-defeating kinda, “collapse”, sort of way, right….

I don’t think I will ever understand it, you know: life, although in a way—you see how obvious it is; how obvious happiness is, how obvious misery and delusion are, to some extent: and yet, who knows what love is, right….

Anyway.

…. Yeah: it is folklore history, not a folklore collection, despite obviously needing to draw on and quote things…. By itself, one isn’t better or worse than another…. Incidentally the comparative/editor’s notes in many folklore collections—classically but by no means only the older ones…. Maybe not even more so, lol—yeah: it’s like, you’re assumed to be sitting in a research library, and also to be humming that tune from the Wizard of Oz, right, (or a corresponding aria from a German opera, lol: not Wagner, lol…. Not that Wagner had his romantic little head screwed on all the way): “and that’s why I haven’t got a heart….”…. Right? ~Although this is a little precious, right…. Not that this sort of a cultural variation—cycle, maybe—is by itself good or bad, inherently: but it’s like, of course it changed in between “ancient times” and “the early 20th century”, right: Christianization is the obvious thing, it does mention that—although the changes brought by churchification, right, might not have been too extreme to a rather heavily patriarchy-leaning paganism, right: At least in the context of a shared pre-industrial civilization—in the absence of witch-hunters and extreme ascetics: never a guarantee, of course—and the shared sense that the festival was about death and the dead: and related things, like divination. (The dead, learning from spirit, divination, right…. Easily associated topics….). The sorta precious middle-class Early Jazz Age parlor-games marriage-divination is an inheritance from those earlier times, and if a little pathetic from the implied sense of constraint, right—from all sorts of things, really: gender; class; race, even, (like say if it’s instead of listening to the more impolite jazz music, right); and family/custom/religion, and culture/custom/religion, right…. It’s all so unbearably polite: I feel attacked…. Right?

Although in a certain sort of way, it’s not inherently…. I don’t know: unskillful, or impractical, even. The psychology of it, as separated out from the compromised packaging given to it by history: class, gender, race, family custom, religion, culture—a task that is obviously impossible, since the circumstances of history are not separate from your own inner theory, or whatever…. In a way, one almost doesn’t matter more than the other, right: how do things matter differently, if they’re linked, right?…. I mean, maybe they do matter differently: folklore isn’t witchcraft—as the folklorists themselves preen, right! Ah yes: don’t bother with sacred things, little doll; you have your dolls, and you are practically a doll yourself…. Lordy knows you wouldn’t want to risk doing wrong, right! If you read the books, you might get confused! You might learn wrong, instead of right! Are the books filled with truth—or with lies? How do we tell? Best to leave it to the boys: for us, it’s enough to get married…. “To each other?” No, not to each other! To the boys!….

But yeah: it’s easy to make fun of, and you can see why: it’s wrong…. But it isn’t, all, wrong, you know….

It’s hard to put it into words….

…. Yeah: I mean, the social context was—“women are (are supposed to be) easily damaged luxury goods (property)”, right…. Nothing completely…. Pure, ironically…. Comes from that, right.

(shrugs) And yet, people want to get married: and the dead can give advice/help, right…. And someone with (or some custom derived from) some probably unschooled, probably rudimentary craft, can connect the two, right…. What was it that that 1900s-era famous genius snobby poet said: there’s one thing that I know about life: “it goes on….” (shrugs) He was right. It goes on. The show goes on, come what may….

…. (chuckles) Oh my, Mary…. What have you done: you’ve bought us sickly sweet, snacks and treats—whatever shall we do. (rolls eyes) (walks off) You’ll be the death of us all….

…. The connection to the season’s nature, so to speak—apples and acorns, right: is good…. The power’s in the plant itself, even before it became a god, right….

And the aspect of seeing omens, good and bad, in the behavior of various things not under human direction, is good: and perhaps to some extent that sort of rudimentary divination—omen-interpreting, right—is unnecessarily neglected, in an age of, well, fancy, complicated systems, for learning about fate, as about all other things, right. (Fancy, complicated ways to get out of tune with the seasons…. Or, to destroy the earth: oh, what fun!….)

Although the other side of it is: especially with regards to the numerological systems, the questions present themselves—is there any system in this, whatever, or is it entirely random; and is it even, indeed, in ‘good faith’, so to speak…. Are we just dealing with semi-lapsed Jazz Age Christians, who don’t give a fig about church—or about anything, ‘and devil take the hindmost’, right…. When I was a Christian both with a feeling that it was good to have an obligation to be loyal: and obligation to save tyranny from its reputation, so to speak: and racism, etc.: but at the same time—I felt a profound lack of secure attachment to the church, right; it was very hard to care about those callous, violent fuckers, right: hard to care that, even in an age of Jim Crow and almost unopposed woman’s bondage, right: it must have been scary for the church loyalists with a practically suffocating, albeit not ambivalent, as surely as not quite ‘secure’, right, attachment to their god’s party, to see the ‘I don’t give a fig about church, or anything else: so devil take the hind-most (capricious pseudo-numerological system off the cuff: mostly so that it rhymes and doesn’t sound un-amusing, right)’, you know….; and just: COULD they have made a good faith numerological system to make their idiotic divination chants sensible, right: in an age of less educational attainment, and less bytes of data, could these women’s magazine readers and party-goers, probably at least as stupid and propagandized as Twitter/Threads users today, if not a bit MORE, and furthermore who didn’t ~want~ the stigma of serious occultism, or anything outside the pay-grade of party-going and common movie-going, right…. No, folklore isn’t witchcraft: nor indeed, were these philosophers….

It is curious to imagine what a ‘pure’ person could do with simple tools—although obvious the very concept of purity is often quite impure, right…. But yeah: sometimes the sophistication of a tool isn’t the thing that signifies, right…. And the same time: the party-goers can be quite base, quite corrupt, and impure by almost any measure, (except the sexual measure, perhaps, right)—in any decade it is the same, really….

…. And of course: nobody mentions magical aids to romantic success, or any other sort: nor mundane aids. It seems to imply a certain fatalism: a bit like checking on your bank balance when you don’t have a stream of income, right….

…. Some of these goddamn post-card artists are just, entirely too much, right… As white as water is wet, you know…. Not Celtic: generic sentimental whites, right…. 🫠

…. Yes, this is not practical magic, right; it’s sexist magic.

(for boys) Modern-passé suffragette
Eternal ancient farmerette
Ugly clerk, lazy shirk
Maid, drudge, terrible bore:
The divisions of woman-kind, say ancient lore
~and it almost is that bad, right: it’s just the difference between cute vs parody: otherwise, the same….

It would be a great spell, you know, if you thought it was funny to see Artemis mad, right…. (snorts)…. Oh, Gaea….

“Gingerbread men could be eaten on Halloween night to ensure finding a real live mate.”

Yes, I could bake a gingerbread woman, eat her on Halloween night…. That could be the seed of a ritual….

(smiles) Although I actually want to have some understanding of, different kinds of things, before I do that, right….

…. But yeah: keeping in mind that divination more similar to reading omens in Nature isn’t inherently invalid just because occultist-designed, Craft-y oracles exist, right…. I mean, some of this crap is just…. Like, the prejudice of housewives, you know. An occasional snooty depreciation of the craft of cards, right—oh, mighty pure ones of the village fair, right—and just a non-stop deluge of romantic stereotypes, right….

~I mean, Athena’s word: sometimes folklore is just like baking piss cookies, or something, you know. “If everyone in the village follows the rules/Sir Ritter won’t murder us: oh, we are his tools.” 🧰 🥰

Like…. wtf, right….

…. “Come let us meet, with charm and spell,
By magic arts our fate to tell.”

(nods) That’s usable…. I mean, I don’t know how I feel about all that sing-song kitschy poetry, right, that everybody is supposed to like, right…. (shrugs) I mean, I’m an Aquarian: I’m not allowed to like things that other people like, right…. Like, Eckhart Tolle is an Aquarian, he’s all like: yeah okay guys, I know everybody says “mindfulness”, but yeah, whatever: I’m gonna go ahead and say, “Presence”, ~and then everyone nods and does hands, and is like, You’re the greatest teacher of our time. Thank you for the gift of your words; I hang on every one. They teach me mindfulness…. ~😁

You don’t understand Aquarians, right…. You just kinda, deal with it, you know….

But yeah: I could break the rules—as an Aquarian, I break the rules; I could do sing-song poetry…. But first, I figure out, what the expectation is, right: so I can subvert that….

~It’s like being a spy. Like in Star Trek where they’re like: how can we trick them? Oh, I know. We’ll do something manifestly dumb: and then that will freak them out like, why is he doing this dumb thing? What’s the catch? How is it a trick? ~And then THAT will be the trick. We’ll toss the fishing net down on his weird ugly face while he’s trying to figure out what our plan is, instead of shooting us with his gun, right.

That is what being an Aquarius is, right. Tricks within tricks…. Sometimes, with the result, of doing obvious, dumb, stupid shit, right…. (laughs)

…. Yeah: not that I’m an experienced practitioner myself, right: but wow, the sense of imagination, right, or the lack thereof, you know…. “Oh! I know! We could play a parlor game, to learn the initials of our True Love (TM)! (makes gleeful sound, claps hands).” Yes, okay…. Imagine you could learn actual kitchen witchery, or herbal magic, right. Imagine considering the practical skills that help in married life. Imagine considering magic with a sense of agency; divination aided by knowledge and philosophy, right….

(shakes head) “I, cannot, imagine it. (shakes head) I am, ~good~. I am, helpless. (nods, smiles stupidly).”

(laughs) And pain will come to you: but not because of me, you can rest assured of that; you can bet your bottom dime we shall not bed together, right….

(shrugs) Yeah, I don’t know; this is what America is like…. This is what the world has been like, for many years, you know…. The most urgent tasks before society, if you read the business magazines, would have to do with how to automate telephone answering services in the right way…. Perhaps how to more fully industrialize food, right….

It’s funny: science and society. Society, especially in these Edwardian-esque times, responded to the advance of science and technology with artificially antique parlor games, meant mostly to disempower women, and therefore retain the “most important bits”, of the past, right…. Although even today, people go like, Cell phones are evil! People like them! That makes them bad!…. I say, out with the Mexicans! Down with the children! Down with the children…. Of the Mexicans! 👹 🇺🇸

And science answers questions: but mostly the questions that society asks, right. (Or else the questions of extremely isolated and socially disconnected modern hermits, right: they tend to be either pathologically risk averse, or else rather rude and cranky; sometimes both, no?)…. What questions does society ask, if not: it seems like, at least three-quarters of the time, right: it’s, how to feed the greed of the rich, and the poor in their poverty, right—usually with the answer, ‘Avoid paying the true price of anything’, right—and therefore, industrial food…. Which I think started in the twenties, right, give or take a few decades: this general time period, right…. And now, it’s like, the invisible mandatory social contract, right: obey industrial food….

(smiles) But at least girls found out the initials of their future owner, right: that’s an important part of the process—get girls to trivialize themselves, so that nobody takes them seriously, or considers there to be an alternative to, or limitation to, male psychosis, basically….

But yeah: this is the sort of place I grew up in, right. It was the end of the 90s, feminism was over, MLK was safely and cozily and respectably dead, and America could look back fondly, at its nostalgic imperial past, you know….

(sighs) And that’s where I’m from, this fucking place—right? Now, some infinitesimally small part of it is on me, no? (shrugs)… (more)