Dark arts

The days are numbered. Nighttime stars are turning into icicles. La Llorona's teeth chatter on the 2am riverbank where only weeks ago cricket song filled the void.

Leaves have gone through the various stages of grieving and come out at acceptance. Being dust ain't half bad if all your friends are dust too.

Halloween country.

Tis the season of little kids nestled in beds, visions of Halloween candy dancing in their heads.  Pumpkins are surrendering to the knife, while medium kids are busily sharpening their toilet-papering skills.

Big kids always get the short end of the October shtick. They must appear uninterested in all this childish crap, despite the certainty that as adults they will break down one day and confess to never having outgrown it. Thank goodness mine are still littles, and I'm already a broken grown-up.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks, but if La Llorona had any sense she'd pack in this business of child-terror in the bosque and get a snug cabin in the woods. Frightening campers on a part-time basis still affords time to keep the toes warm. Or maybe Hollywood, where the pay far exceeds what an undead working gal can eek out in a duck marsh.

But La Llorona - bless her - is a bit of a turnip, and pretty unmotivated for a psychopath. With a little more drive, she'd be spending October on the silver screen with the Trementina sisters of Guadalupe, instead of knee-deep in pond slime.

Seasonal witchcraft. 

I reckon the producers of 'Bless Me Ultima' couldn't have picked a better month to open the show in New Mexico. Rudolfo Anaya's masterpiece is a book that takes a greater interest in witchcraft than your average book. I think of it as Anaya's answer to Ray Bradbury's 'Something Wicked This Way Comes.'

The film premiered at the Lensic in Santa Fe on the 18th. It's a pretty cool movie, and very spiritually true to the book. I loved being there on opening night, and it was an honor to meet Anaya.

The film takes a brave linguistic stand, with dialogue moving freely between Spanish and English, as it would in real life. No screen space is wasted on subtitles. So while audiences in Vermont might miss some of the jokes, I applaud the decision not to dumb it down.

La Llorona may disagree with me of course. But that rather proves my point considering the whole turnip business, and the fact that her days aren't even numbered.