Weekend of Halloween
Last Friday, a friend from Brazil asked me, through Skype, what was I doing up so late… It was one in the morning. I answered that the city was up celebrating Halloween on the streets, and that I was laying quietly in bed reading and listening to music. “You’re right”, he said. “When the witches are out, the fairies stay in!” He asked me to leave my window open and to wait for a cold wind to come in. Since it wasn’t so cold – we are at the end of October - I decided to follow his advice. I turned the lights off and started dreaming.
Halloween was coincidentally on the same day as the Simha Tora, a very important Jewish celebration. Ten minutes early for the synagogue, I decide to get into the Borders bookstore, and buy Alicia Keys latest DVD, “Unplugged”. I pay for it, and before I leave, this incredible light starts blinding me.
I try to find where it is coming from and I realize that it comes from a brilliant ball on the cover of a book displayed on a table right next to a pile of books on Harry Potter, attracting my attention continuously… “ Hey, Jo, can’t you see me? , just buy me, come on!” “Wizardology” a book for children about the Wizard Merlin’s magic. This book sounds just like me. When I had my Past Lives Therapy, I found out that I was an apprentice of a famous wizard, most probably Merlin. Would he be calling me again here at 57th avenue, Manhattan, on Simha Torah´s day?
It’s a sign! Obvious. I get in line again and, while I reach for my wallet to pay for the book, a handsome, young, charming man, blinded by the cover of the book, asks me what book was that. I show him without saying a word. The Rabbi is about to start reading the Bible for the last time this year, so I take off. The “prince” I met in the store is already outside, waiting for me: “Wait a minute… I’m sure you will try to cast the spell from the book, but please, make sure that the recipe on the book is correct otherwise, the prince can become a frog before you even realize it.” I didn’t have time to analyze that.
On Sunday, I am invited for two parties. I’m so pale that, without any make-up I look like a ghost, halfway through the Halloween costume. I look up Google a Halloween with a wich face , but the list is so long that scared and unmotivated I switch the TV on for ideas, suddenly ,I Bruce Willis talking to at the boy with a sixth sense; Jack Nicholson flying with the Eastwick witches; Dr. Jekill confabulating London; Angelica Huston eating who knows what with her Adams family; the vampire Tom Cruise and his girl walking through the streets at night, Angelina Jolie explaining in an interview her obsession with knives… My God, what will I do? Oh, I know.
I’m going to get those candies and pumpkins that the kids brought in for “trick or treat”, light some perfumed candles, dim off the lights, turn on my iPod and listen to the sound to The Phantom of the Opera’s “Think of Me”, et voila… I’ll invite a frog that I met jumping around on 57th avenue, in front of Borders bookstore.
Happy Halloween.
Petter Hegre's
