I Love This

Love Letters

I found this via StumbleUpon (my favorite internet gadget thingy ever).

This is such a strikingly brilliant and vulnerable thing to me. The way it works is that this person wrote hundreds of love letters addressing people in her life and then shared them with strangers. She ("Asia") wrote the letters, mailed the letters to strangers with the message glued to the outside of the envelope so anyone could read them along the way and then posted them online for the rest of us to read. The letters are color-coded depending on who they were written to: a crush, a former lover, a family member and so on.

I love this because it makes me think of a dream I've had for a while now to hide bits of poetry in the woods somewhere in the hopes that someone would find them. Anonymously, you know? Just little secret messages to whoever comes along. I would love to find something like that myself.

Why I Do It

It's making the monsters I both dreaded and wished were waiting beyond the hedges when I was young enough to trick-or-treat.

It's the hours surrounded by paint, glue, paper mache, sticks, wires, tape and sketches.

It's the clippings of found horrors pinned up for inspiration.

It's the dark music slithering through the air with the scent of clove and cinnamon candles and the smoke of incense.

It's the mounting anticipation as the sun drops a little sooner each day and the cold begins to rob the crickets of their inspiration and the garage door can stay open a little later because there are no more uninvited guests bouncing obsessively off the fluorescent tubes of the workbench.

It's about the family and friends who are excited to hear what I'm up to and want to be a part of it, offering their help, advice, time and effort.

It's about the kindred spirits found along the way: the folks who inspire and encourage you to go 'even bigger next year' every year simply by following their own inspiration and sharing it.

It's the reactions. All of them. The kids and the parents. The appreciation and the concerned expressions and hasty retreats.

It's about creating (re-creating?) an experience that will inspire some kid to do the same thing with their own yard some day.

The "Why We Haunt" page of the Grim Hollow website got me thinking about this.

I'm working on a new site for Halloween, horror and all that good stuff. I don't want to say much more than that right now but I'm pretty excited about it. There'll be more news as the big day approaches.

Cheers.