Funky Party Weasel

On ritual

I’m up to my eyeballs in the work I actually get paid to do and which I’m (regretfully, ungratefully) trying not to resent at the moment, so this week’s newsletter is a little shorter than usual. If you think someone you know might enjoy my writing, please consider sharing it with them, so that I can eventually turn this newsletter into a viable side hustle, deliver more content, and pursue my creative calling with the zeal of a rabid animal. Thank you, readers. You’re the mutt’s nuts.

---

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

I loved much of the ritual that suffused my childhood attending a Catholic private school where those who skipped out on Sunday mass were threatened with excommunication (acceptable) or the eternal flames, not of the Bangles, but of incommensurable damnation (less alluring).

I was an altar girl and wore white robes. My counterpart and I sat erect on stage, waiting to be called to pour water and sweet wine. I always served the wine, and the priest would let me empty my flask into his chalice. If our sexes had been reversed, this last sentence would seem terribly perverse.

I don’t mean any disrespect, although once my parents laughed outright when I warned them, red-faced and earnest, that they were setting a course for hell by refusing to attend church. Their mirth planted the seed of contempt in my ingenuous mind.

One time, an altar boy passed out on the dais, lulled, perhaps, by the litany, swayed by the scriptures. That day I understood what the fear of God was, and refused to put the white robes back on, even though I loved their ecclesiastical smell. I thought that I, too, might crumple at the foot of the priest, a milky shell whose soul had been sucked out by divine ordinance.

A few years later, I started reading an awful lot of vampire fiction.

I give dogma the side-eye, but I find Judeo-Christian ritual compelling. I like the symbolism, the deliberate gestures executed in their secret order, the recurring formulas delivered with varying degrees of fervour. The power of ritual is partially due to its ability to slow down time.  Ritual demands careful and sequential movement and thought.  When time slows, it feels less lean.

The lengthening of darkness and the austerity of the fall naturally lend themselves to considering the quivering space perched on the cusp of life and whatever is beyond, whether fleeting or eternal. Not all rituals are meditative or introspective, however. The more resonant the beckoning of the beyond, the more desperately we evade the solemn toll of its solitary request by indulging in chaotic revelry.

Consider the trashy eroticism and plastic paraphernalia of the Halloween party. Its deliberate tastelessness is part of what makes it such an effective foil for mortality. The ephemeral nature of the cheap costume is in fact a disguise for the passage of time. The pumpkin, whose flesh will rot within days of its innards being exposed, laughs menacingly in the face of impermanence, even as its light threatens to go out with the first gust of wind. The funky party weasels on the dance floor hurtle past their own temporality with disjointed passion, inculpating those standing on the sidelines with an angular disco finger.

Jollification makes the moment disproportionately large.

Let us join hands, lower our heads and remember that a ritual, even in its most secular articulation, is another transient moment when we may feel unified, as a congregation, in purpose.

Post scriptum : a seasonal poem

I recently stumbled across this acrostic poem, alluding to the rituals of Samhain, which I wrote as a school assignment when I was fifteen or sixteen. My love of alliteration, as you may have noticed, runs deep.

I’ve transcribed it below for the children you know: your own, your nieces and nephews, those at the dog park, the child still shuffling around your own mortal coil.

Let me know if they’re lulled by its rhythm.

Pumpkin lanterns by my kids

Samhain Nights

Soothsayers summon their spirits tonight,

Ancient pyres are once more alight.

Mandrake sifts through the silver stars and

Hemlock laces the ale and fare.

Amidst the roar of the blazing fire,

Ignited souls twist and writhe,

Now to the drone of the kettle drum,

Now to the wills of Urth and Skuld.

Ivy climbs and claws down streets where

Guisers grin through grotesque masks, and

Howl at the sorcerous waning moon as

The reaper stares from beneath his cowl,

Swinging scythe in his deadly grasp.