Yes, Halloween is a thing here in France too. In the morning costumed little kids (Harry Potter! The Little Matchstick Girl! A Karate Kid) were actually going into shops for candy. The candy didn't look too impressive though. Little commercial packages of something colorful? Certainly none of that fancy stuff from the local chocalatiers. This evening, in the wine bar we were drinking wine in, the bar's little dog barked at some trick or treaters, but eventually some wee revelers came in only to find the man there had no candy and did not feel comfortable giving them alcohol or meat. They seemed to take it in course. There are many places here that are decorated for the day as well, but all of the ones that are have a sort of French restraint to it, just one large web full of spiders, not two, which would suggest an overzealousness the neighbors might sniff at. It's all nice to see, but nothing to sweep me away. A local museum with gardens we now regularly visit is all lit up at night in a very spooky glowing green color, but I am honestly not sure whether that is a Halloween special lighting, or just how they roll.
So with all that, I have been helping myself to some extra Halloween feeling by pumping up some of my photographs with "Halloweeniness", but I'd say it has brought back mixed results and I have shifting feelings about these images. I'd say it's maybe a bit too grand a town for a proper Halloweeen feel. I don't know what you'd say, since you don't say much.
"What do you mean" you say. "I talk all the time in clerkmanifesto!"
Oh, right. Sorry. My bad.
You'd say "I don't know. I kind of like them, especially when you start adding in the rabbit witch (sorciere lapin!), one of your more complicated and enigmatic characters."
Oh, good, then I'm glad I'm including them.
Some of these pictures are of a church where not that long ago a religiously crazed man famously went and stabbed a bunch of people. I guess that's the kind of thing that's almost Halloween, but isn't? I think it would have to have been a hundred years ago, and include ghostly reappearances for it to go properly Halloween. Now it's just tragic fundamentalism. This fresh in the history it's a horrifying anecdote and is missing the required spooky cozy chill.
It needs that fictional quality.
But it's worth noting it, don't you think?
You consider this, but quietly and thoughtfully.
"No, no." I say. That counts as talking too.
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