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Letters to the Great Pumpkin 2019
Feb. 4th, 2020 01:58 pmDear Great Pumpkin,
I think this year I may have found the most sincere pumpkin patch ever, and I sit here surrounded by other children who have chosen to believe, chosen to have faith in your gifts, or even those who merely lurk and skulk along the vines just to be a part of the ceremony of your arrival.
Outside, there are other patches where children choose to congregate, huddling together among the graveyards and street corners where the promise of death and violence is disguised with stone art and gentle golden beams from above. While they are sincere and devoted to your season, their exchanges of candy and tricks affirm their humanity and their community rather than opening their arms to welcome in the wild madness and insanity that is your true gift. It is well and well again, for I believe they will come to you in their own time when they start yearning for more.
We need you more than ever, GP. It feels every year more that we are trapped in a world of constant strife and despair, of running faster and faster in search of elusive future promise time and calm that may be the greatest lie we can tell ourselves. There is so little time for stories, so little time to read your history and tales of your pranks; so little time to sit around the fire, holding off the evils of the dark with the fellowship of your revels.
Every day tells us to be responsible, to believe in only what we can see or sense, to winnow truth from lie and to eschew the latter while embracing only the former. But lies can lead us to truth. I believe in the lies that you teach us. I believe in terrible hope, in sincerity even when there are no boxes of these to be exchanged. I believe that it’s important to yearn for things that you may not receive, that the belief and the striving is absolutely as important as the reward.
This year I did better, I think. I reached out and took the hand of the boy beside me in the pumpkin patch, and he teaches me every day about new kinds of sincerity. I finished another novel, and this time salted it with your seeds in a way that I hope the world can recognize and appreciate. I wrote your truths in my blood and sent it in bottles and have word that, here and there, they have reached new beaches.
I have been fortunate to receive your attentions and favors. Even with your Autumn cruelty to remind me that life is fleeting, I find the world all the more precious. Let us all mourn and wail of the spirits moved beyond your veil, yet be joyous that they ride with you on the wild hunt across the night skies and between the worlds. They have escaped the daily mundanities that dull the edges of our hearts - and while they slice us with their renewed sharpness, let us remember in their names and with their examples to slice our way through this world - for in our blood, and in the words and deeds we paint with it, do we ever become immortal.
Yours eternally,
Jeannie
I think this year I may have found the most sincere pumpkin patch ever, and I sit here surrounded by other children who have chosen to believe, chosen to have faith in your gifts, or even those who merely lurk and skulk along the vines just to be a part of the ceremony of your arrival.
Outside, there are other patches where children choose to congregate, huddling together among the graveyards and street corners where the promise of death and violence is disguised with stone art and gentle golden beams from above. While they are sincere and devoted to your season, their exchanges of candy and tricks affirm their humanity and their community rather than opening their arms to welcome in the wild madness and insanity that is your true gift. It is well and well again, for I believe they will come to you in their own time when they start yearning for more.
We need you more than ever, GP. It feels every year more that we are trapped in a world of constant strife and despair, of running faster and faster in search of elusive future promise time and calm that may be the greatest lie we can tell ourselves. There is so little time for stories, so little time to read your history and tales of your pranks; so little time to sit around the fire, holding off the evils of the dark with the fellowship of your revels.
Every day tells us to be responsible, to believe in only what we can see or sense, to winnow truth from lie and to eschew the latter while embracing only the former. But lies can lead us to truth. I believe in the lies that you teach us. I believe in terrible hope, in sincerity even when there are no boxes of these to be exchanged. I believe that it’s important to yearn for things that you may not receive, that the belief and the striving is absolutely as important as the reward.
This year I did better, I think. I reached out and took the hand of the boy beside me in the pumpkin patch, and he teaches me every day about new kinds of sincerity. I finished another novel, and this time salted it with your seeds in a way that I hope the world can recognize and appreciate. I wrote your truths in my blood and sent it in bottles and have word that, here and there, they have reached new beaches.
I have been fortunate to receive your attentions and favors. Even with your Autumn cruelty to remind me that life is fleeting, I find the world all the more precious. Let us all mourn and wail of the spirits moved beyond your veil, yet be joyous that they ride with you on the wild hunt across the night skies and between the worlds. They have escaped the daily mundanities that dull the edges of our hearts - and while they slice us with their renewed sharpness, let us remember in their names and with their examples to slice our way through this world - for in our blood, and in the words and deeds we paint with it, do we ever become immortal.
Yours eternally,
Jeannie
