the witching month

It is the season of magic, of ancient harvest moons, smoke, bonfires and dancing to the drums. It is a time to celebrate El Dia de los Muertos - a festival of the ancestors. My personal experience with October sends many memories; a dark Los Angeles night and a feeling of my solitariness in a tremendous city, with background noise of traffic, sirens and the scurry of city life.

I was recently divorced and was renting a house in mid Wilshire, Los Angeles. If you went a block east, you were in questionable territory and going two blocks west, you landed in Hancock Park; mansions and wondrous homes that often one asked, who lived there or if anyone lived there at all. My new digs was a creaky, funky, run down space but it had a huge working studio and a courtyard that was filled with warm sunshine during the day. I had taken the bars off the windows because they obstructed the beautiful light that was needed to do my painting. I lived in the center of a Korean neighborhood. Sundays, I could hear a nearby apartment of worshippers singing hymns. Homeless would stroll by with their shopping carts while cars whizzed and helicopters hovering over the cityscape would jangle my nerves late at night. One October, my mother had come to visit me from the east coast. I had had a biopsy on my right beast and was waiting for the results to see if the growth was cancerous. My mother accompanied me to the doctor's; seated in the waiting room, I anticipated the call for the consultation. I remember so vividly how cool and confident my mother was, not doubting for a second that the results were okay and she was right. That evening, we returned to my eccentric pad, but it looked different. I put on my running shoes, skipped through the neighborhood, happily and freely, running with abandon. Every October I think of this incident; the in between darkness and light that I felt; that past, the comfort of others and my fortunate place that I inhabit today.