Gravity Falls

1 Comment July 19, 2024 Steve A. Wiggins

Okay, so why didn’t anybody tell me? Well, I suppose it’s because few people know me. But still, I had to find out about Summerween from the New York Times. Folks, I don’t spend a lot of time online. I work long days and I read books and mow the lawn. I just don’t have time. I wasn’t aware that Summerween was happening. Interestingly, the idea got started from Gravity Falls, an animated television show based on Twin Peaks and The X-Files. I actually watched this show because a couple of young friends, who spend a lot of time online, started showing it to me. I didn’t remember, however, that in one episode the population of Gravity Falls decides to celebrate a second Halloween in the summer. And now internet influencers (I’m more of an unfluencer) are popularizing the holiday.

The need for spooky holidays is encouraging to me. I’ve long been exploring the spirituality of the unexpected, and Summerween has the possibility of contributing to it. According to the New York Times article there’s no set date for the celebration. It’s more of a party aesthetic, but, the story notes, Michaels, the arts and crafts chain, has already caught on and is stocking scary summer decorations. I have long opined (and fifteen years is a lot of daily posting—nearly five-and-a-half thousand of them) that people are afraid. That’s why they run after unlikely political leaders and seek shelter beneath the wings of the Almighty. Horror movies, and Halloween, simply bring this out into the open. And what’s wrong with having a little fun with it along the way?

By the by, if you haven’t checked out Gravity Falls, you don’t know what you’re missing. It’s a Disney production and it’s aimed at a younger crowd. That’s one of the disconnects I experience here: Halloween is something younger people love. At work I can’t count the number of people who’ve said (not to me directly, since few speak to me that way) that Halloween is their favorite holiday. I guess you wouldn’t expect to find a kindred spirit among old guys who edit biblical studies, of all people. I venture to guess that any of them would be surprised to learn that someone of my vintage even knows what Gravity Falls or Summerween is. Well, they’d have been right about the latter, had it not been for an article yesterday in the Gray Lady. And what a more adult way to find something out might there be?

Copyright: Disney. Summerween trickster, *Gravity Falls*

3 Comments January 26, 2019 Steve A. Wiggins

Like a book, life can be divided into chapters. This is perhaps an instance of art following reality, or perhaps it’s the other way around. The episodic nature of life suggests the chapter structure of books. As I was waking up this morning (disappointingly before 4:00 a.m.) I was reflecting on the chapters of my life. As with a book, the most recently read decade is perhaps freshest in one’s mind, but the decades do seem to fall roughly into format. We tend to think of that first decade—childhood—fondly, even if in reality it wasn’t all games and candy. It’s biology’s way of encouraging us toward that weird teen chapter of puberty with its intense emotions and maturing bodies. That chapter is recalled, at least in my experience, as a turmoil involving both good and bad.

The twenties, in my book, were spent in higher education. It was a cerebral chapter. Finishing college and starting grad school. Finishing a masters and discovering employment difficult to find with a master’s degree. In my book marriage was in the twenties chapter, along with a doctorate. The next chapter, the thirties, was spent entirely at Nashotah House. That involved becoming a father as well as a professor. The other faculty were fathers of a different sort. I always thought chapters should show some continuity but the forties chapter was that part of the book known as the crisis. The upending of convention. The self-reinvention. The move. I suppose in terms of a novel that was when it started to get really interesting, but from my perspective life had been plenty interesting enough by that point.

The fifties have been a bit more settled. The publishing chapter. The house-buying move added drama, of course, but otherwise the nine-to-five is like a mind-numbing drug. Mine involved a commute that lead to its own unpublished book, as well as two somewhat academic tomes. All of this was going through my head the way thoughts do when you can’t force yourself back to sleep. The paradigm suggests itself to someone who has, in one form or another, been writing for his entire life. Or writing his life. My first attempts at being a novelist began in chapter two. On yellowed paper somewhere in the attic I still have that first handwritten attempt at literary expression. The current chapter has me becoming a gruncle (with a nod to Gravity Falls fans) and wondering how a great niece might read a book written like this. If she will even have an interest. That’s the way of books, as any librarian knows. Maybe some warm milk and a cookie are indicated.