As the season transits, and the air gets colder, sunlight ebbs and harvest begins, embarks the last day of October.  Here, up north it is quiet, as it usually is and the green house with the Japanese where nothing seems to happen, and is never decorated for any holiday stands immutable to the sands of time.  They never give out candy to the young children that migrate in this little enclave.  So may time endure?  The house on the other side with three previous owners has two pit bulls, that are never seen, that lives in a garage viciously, and barks at the slightest provocation or noise.  The house opposite to the left, painted white has an absent owner and tenants that are not seen or heard.  They cut down all the flowers and roses that surrounded their house with the last owner and don’t decorate either or give out candy to the young costumed children. They live next to the two older women who drive one SUV and never use the front door; they only exit via an electric garage door.  The tenants in front of this house decorate for Halloween and have two kids with long hair and an older daughter that looks exactly like their mother.  Of Latino ancestry, they live with their grandmother who only comes out to put out their trash cans each week on a Tuesday.  Aside from the pit bulls barking, this neighborhood is quiet, like the silence before the storm, not ringed with frolicking children or busy industrious young adults who come and go and make their living.

Living across the street and housebound by chance and health the neighborhood is too quiet to be real.  It is too quiet to be ascertained too quiet to be believed and too quiet to the observed.  Tonight is Halloween and we will count the children who come and will receive a candy bar.  There is plenty candy to go round and there is always the leftover to be enjoyed.  Tonight is Halloween on a Sunday.  The Covid epidemic is winding down and soon the holidays will start and be enjoyed and signal another year of life to be chalked up as a success to the living who has survived. 

Five severed latex heads sit on the ground illuminated by ultraviolet light.  Over on the side yard on the Japanese side inflatables balloon and wave around the clock: a cat, a witch, and a goblin.  Seven more hours to go on this all hallowed eve until the end of the year and thanksgiving harvest ensue. 

Early tomorrow morning all the inflatables and outside décor will be retrieved and laid to dry out to be stored presently.   No more decoration till December when we celebrate the birth of the Messiah.  Time goes on, the silence runs deeply and the night beckons its darkest splendor and the year runs out.  This and more in the life in the new millennium somewhere in California distantly.   Time to look forward to the black market adds that will inundate the media starting at twelve and one A.M. in the dark of the night all alone.