Long Time Gone

I am feeling rather "out of sync" in many ways.  Perhaps it is a sign of being old.  Perhaps it is a sign of not always being "gun-ho" and "accepting" of everything changing all the damn time.  Perhaps it is just the exhaustion of my body as I try to continue to teach while having laryngitis.  I do not know. But here are some thoughts I have been having:

• My title to this post was based upon my feeling lost in the modern day in many ways.  Things seem too chaotic, too mindlessly frenetic.  I feel old.  While sleeping a lot this past weekend, I alternated between listing to classical music on NPR, jazz music on NPR, and listening to my C, S, N, & Y channel on Pandora.  The song, Long Time Gone by C, S, & N (no Y) spoke to me. 
• Halloween is quickly approaching.  I do not really like Halloween anymore.  For me, the Halloween demeanor has gotten too grotesque and morbid.  I do not enjoy the gore, the extreme and realistic imagery of blood & guts, or of zombies, or even the morbid, very realistic skeletons etc.  It feels, I do not know.... perhaps disrespectful is the best word I can think of.  Disrespectful to the dead, disrespectful to life.  I do not really understand what I am feeling.  I just know that it feels too much.
• When I was young, Halloween seemed more FESTIVE and not so sinister.  Of course there were "ghosts" but they were rather silly and cute. There were jack-o-lanterns, and black cats, and candy.  Kids dressed as all sorts of things.... cowboys, princesses, super heros, etc.  I do not really remember anyone who had a truly gory costume.  

No longer popular, too, is much of the candy I remember as a kid.  It is not often I see the old staples of "Boston Baked Beans" or "Burnt Peanuts" nor "Zero" candy bars or "Mallocups" or "Necos".  Fortunately, every once in a while I can stumble across one or more of the above, usually in a dusty corner of a dollar store, and it brings back a flood of memories.  The one candy I remember being so common as a candy when I was young was the "Bun" like shown above.  I especially liked getting a Maple one, but was also happy with the vanilla.  It was always a wonderfully sweet treat.  The above candies were ESPECIALLY fun as they differed from the norm (aka Hershey's Snickers, etc).... but they also were unique and tasty and profoundly abundant at Halloween.  

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