Halloween is to have FUN!
Halloween is one of my favorite celebrations. Why? Because that's when everyone is allowed to costume, and go out in the streets and do crazy stuff just for fun. And you know, I always love dressing up, to invoke some of my weirdness... ok yes I probably love it because it's simply one of the nights I'm actually able to be myself! ha ha!
Halloween is a way to connect with your neighbors
Living in France for so long, I've always been so decipointed because barely anyone celebrates it there : either it's for a few kids, or some people throw on a private party, but it's not like in the US where you actually look weird if you don't disguise!
You have houses decorated with pumpkins, that's the sign they are playing the game. You have groups of children wandering the neighborhood's streets knocking on doors asking "Trick or Treat!"... I think this is a wonderful opportunity to get to know better your neighbors (well, at least the ones which have kids). Especially in our world where the media puts so much emphasis on the drama, crimes, terrorists, etc... creating so much fear against each other when more than ever we should be building trust, confidence and be supportive of each other to help each other evolve on our paths and to build against climate change!
On a spiritual and symbolic level : all that Halloween means for me
Halloween has several meanings for me that I take from the pagan/christian traditions and that I have made my own. On a spiritual and astronomical level, it's celebrating the darkness, the mysteries, where the lines between the worlds (ours and the spirit world) are dimmed. Darkness is not evil, you can see it as the counterpart of light, just like one object has two aspects to it : night and day, male and female, rise and fall, earth and sky, etc. Halloween is the time where the rythms are slowing down, the rest after the fruitful year. It is a time where the natural cycle of the seasons, vegetation, invites us to stop, reflect upon our past actions, dwell in the unconscious darkness of our minds, dwell there in order to better bring them forth to the light and consciousness in the spring time.
Likewise we celebrate the history of our family, our lineage, we are invited to celebrate our ancestors, value the lessons we have learned from them and where we come from. This does not necessarily mean that our ancestors where all angels that need to be revered, but simply acknowledging them as people from which we inherit might bring us better understanding, compassion, and thus freedom to choose our own path once we've understood what we want and don't want from our heritage.
My understanding of Halloween is that we costume ourselves so that the evil spirits that come through the veil do not recognize us and leave us alone. So that the next day, November 1st, we are able to visit our ancestors in peace.
Illustration of my life
So every year I like taking a time to reflect on where my life is taking
me and, if not satisfied by it, decide what I can change about it. One
of the most profound change I made in 2015 when I realized that my
choice of being a "professional volunteer to change the world" was no
longer satisfying to me and decided I was stopping this "career". I did
not have a clear view of what I really wanted but I knew I had to stop
this way of functioning. That's when I decided to go study permaculture
in Australia for a year!
This process of going into the darkness, where comes the seed of all life and creation, connects me to the process of composting : the alchemy of using waste to create fertility. The act of caring from where we come from : the soil. All the nutrients that make up our bodies ultimately come from the soil. That is whey in France there is so much emphasis on the "terroir", la terre, the soil. Perhaps the idea that the Bible cites God making Adam out of clay is not so far fetched at all...
Anyway in my family, November 1st was always the day we choose to celebrate "Compost day", which is the emptying of the matured composted toilet heap and where we start the new one that will be filled up for the next year.
My crazy compost zombie-lady show
Today people are so disconnected with this process, especially in LA, this concrete jungle where even where there are gardens, lawns serve the purpose of a carpet and the other plants as decorative furniture with no consideration with their actual original ecosystem!
This was my first Halloween in the US since I was a kid... and instead of simply making a costume and giving away candy like everyone else, I wanted to make something special! Especially that we get a lot of kids... hmmm... or rather the university students that come here in our neighborhood, I thought out something a little more creative to make them question their everyday lives and talk about one of my favorite topic : COMPOST!!! And hell, they are college students, someone has to wake up their brains!
So for every group of student who came, I had so much fun making a show of it!
Students where totally surprised at
first, but most of them responded really well, being quite curious about
the subject, and most of all about my weird character which they
couldn't quite define...
Can you?
The funniest is that not that many uni students were bold to put their hands in the compost to get their candy... but when once I got actual kids, as soon as they knew where the candy was they didn't think twice and dove their hands right into it! lol That shows us that we still do have our instincts somewhere before we grow up!
I had so many groups come up to the house I did not count them. All I know is that I was kept busy from around 7 to 10pm with about one group every 15 min! 1 or 2 groups where really clueless about the subject and not interested, 1 or 2 groups knew quite a lot about bio-chemestry and the environment, maybe 5 groups had people in them who had a compost at home or in their traditional families but seemed to be almost ashamed of talking about their "old-fashioned" families to their friends, and the rest of them didn't know much but where actually really interested - or at least, they really liked my crazy show! xD Well, you do have to get them by one way or the other!
I would try and have them explain me different things about what happened to waste when it went to the landfill, organic matter, what was composting and stuff... I tried to adapt my speech to each group and according to my inspiration. But by the end I had a pretty good set of questions.
I asked my brother to film me in the process, but he did not dare show himself so here is the best bad quality VIDEO you will have of me.
I love this Story!! Thank you Julia for being YOU!
RépondreSupprimer