Tag: Halloween

Witchcraft and Creepy Statues: a Freshman’s First Reading by Gemma Collins

Leave a comment

Never before I got into Creative Writing did I actively go to readings. It was a foreign concept until about last week when I pulled up Green Apple Book’s website and picked the soonest reading. It didn’t matter to me the book or the author, I simply intended to go, watch, and go home.

It was 6:30 pm after school on a Tuesday, and I pushed away my sleepiness and headed to Green Apple. The book Initiated: Memoir of a Witch by Amanda Yates Garcia was displayed all over the store. Ready to take notes, I pulled out my notebook and pencil. When the author came out and sat on the little stool in front of a microphone, I realized I wouldn’t be taking notes. I would be watching intently. She brought with her a small altar, on it was an age stained doily, a pomegranate, a few crystals, a statue of the goddess of Crete, and elusive essential oils.

Fascinated and slightly confused, I couldn’t help but ask what the items were. She looked curious about my question, possibly because everyone else at the reading was an adult, but then told me the items were passed down from her ancestors and brought peace and balance. The author then asked the audience to hum and clap to the rhythm of our heartbeats. This, she said, was an exercise to show how humans are connected by our hearts.

I was surprised at how interactive the reading was, and I was slightly unsettled. Witchcraft, similar to readings, is another unexplored realm to me. The room vibrated with the audience’s humming, and I too, attempted to join after the shock of the cult-like exercise settled in and I had violently scribbled out some notes.

When I returned home afterward, I no longer thought of readings as chores and dreaded tasks. The interactive style gave me excitement for my next reading. Inspired by the witchy and Halloween theme, I wrote a short poem:

Halloween

When the sun sinks into the horizon along the tops of city building

We swiftly grab bags and head out the door,

Elaborate costumes on our backs.

 

Throughout the night,

Our bags are weighed down with candy,

Snickers and gummy bears and Twix and lollypops.

Littered among them

Empty wrappers of the sweets we eat while walking.

 

When we get back home

We sit cross-legged on the floor and dump each bag over the hardwood,

Hard candies clinking together.

Hours later, piles of our sorted candies make tripping hazards around the house.

We lie,

Costumes crushed under us

The sugar crash has struck.

 

-Gemma Collins, class of 2023

Halloween by Noa Mendoza

Leave a comment

On Friday night—the eve before All Hallow’s Eve, I did something I thought I would never do: I chaperoned a Halloween Dance. Well, chaperoned is a strong word—it was more along the lines of taking people’s coats and throwing them in bags for coat check and using the magical cotton candy machine to make people cotton candy. While I went into the dance with the entirely wrong attitude (“this is gonna be lame” I’d grumbled, sinking into my chair and pulling my hood over my eyes), I ended up discovering something entirely surprising–dances are kind of… fun.

Sure, they’re lame. Sure, it was just a bunch of Freshman gyrating to pop music,

but, halfway through a Pitbull song, I had some sort of epiphany: if I had to be there, I might as well enjoy myself. So, I threw some coats in the back and, along with Josie Weidner (’16), went and danced the night away. This, I realized, is something that applies to being a writer as well. There have always been prompts that I didn’t like, that felt completely ridiculous, or times when I thought I absolutely can’t write this play or poetry is so stupid, what’s the point—but, like chaperoning a Halloween Dance, sometimes it’s good to push yourself. To get out of your comfort zone and write that weird conceptual poem or do the cha cha slide. And it was if you just “go with the flow” (in the words of Josie Weidner ’16, someone I only kind of know), you might just **gasp** enjoy yourself.

Noa Mendoza, class of 2016

[DR]: 10/31, In terms of Halloween costumes

Leave a comment

by Frances (’14)

Most people dressed up, sort of. Heather had a spider on her head. Molly wore a dress and a horse mask. Olivia A was the Common Application, which was pretty much the scariest costume I saw all day. She’d even written out her personal statement on her legs. Among the others, there were many animal ears and many wings. Maia dressed up as herself in high school, which meant a funny orange wig that I think was supposed to indicate that she’d had different hair at the time, though not necessarily orange hair. I did not even sort of dress up, but I guess I also did a pretty good job looking like myself in high school. Staying true to her costume, Maia played some of the popular dance music from back when she was in high school, and we had a department-wide dance party.

Later, in Creative Writing II, we continued the Halloween celebrations by watching a video of Salvador Dali—who was a friend Lorca, a poet we are studying—as a guest an old game show where blindfolded contestants asked questions to figure out the guest’s identity. Although Dali answered yes to practically all the questions, the contestants eventually asked whether or not he had a mustache and figured out who he was from there.

Then we played a Halloween-themed word game—which was actually in some ways similar to the game show—involving teams and trying to convey the name of a monster to your team without actually saying it. We took “monster” pretty broadly, as C-Dubs do with most things. Our monsters included: Miley Cyrus, Ronald McDonald, several Frankensteins, and the counting vampire from Sesame Street.