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Take Me Away From All This Death
And other silly requests we make of life’s vampires, Halloween and the hard work of Becoming Fully Human
The snow is piled on my deck, five inches of it, and the awning is frozen shut. At just before five, this October morning, just a few days from Halloween, is silent, brooding. Bare branches creak against my windows as a sharp-toothed wind cuts the neighborhood. You can easily imagine burning, bright, hungry eyes in the last of the bushes, stubbornly refusing to give up their dead leaves to the coming winter.
Blood suckers, lying in the wait in the terrible cold, waiting for a crack in the window.
At the beginning of the season (which for TJ Maxx, which puts pumpkins out in early July, for crying out loud) I watch my favorite scary movies. Among them, including the great animated classic The Nightmare Before Christmas, I include the 1992 classic by Francis Ford Coppola, Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
It’s not just that Dracula had such a superb cast (if you will forgive, as most of us did, the horrible attempts at English accents by the otherwise terrific Keanu Reeves and Winona…