Last night Amanda and I went to the Phantom Feast which is
held in Bad Manor, on the property of the Renaissance Festival. About a month
ago, we went to the Feast of Fantasy, in the same building, on the same
property. The two shows are very different, and both incredibly entertaining.
The Feast of Fantasy is a performance filled with belly
dancers, fire eaters, sword swallowers, and the like. It is a six-course dinner
with banquet-style service for which I would provide zero Michelin stars. It’s
not about the food, it’s about the exhibition. It’s fun, it’s funny, and it takes up three
hours of an otherwise boring Sunday afternoon. This is the second year we
attended, and we will certainly go back again. At the end of the show, they
hand out $5 discount cards for the Phantom’s Feast which we wanted to attend
last year, but we could not.
This year we did. The show starts around 6pm as we are all
guided inside of a cozy room where the roughly 100 of us sit down in our
assigned seats (our backs were to the decorated stage seen below) at which our salads and desserts are already set. The salad is
decent, and so as to not risk anything happening to my dessert like say maybe a
ghost steals it, I devour it. The show begins with Jimmy (also the host of
Feast of Fantasy) reading a Shakespeare verse, then telling some stories of the
alleged haunting of Bad Manor and the property. Of course, at the proper times,
some of the audience is startled by banging on the walls. Could it be
malevolence? Perhaps.
Jimmy told his well-informed stories of the history of the
grounds, and apprises us that the property sits atop a large quantity of silica
sand which, of course, is small crystals. Crystals hold energy, it’s
literally what they do, and it’s said that good and bad spirits alike haunt
people at night. And in the day. They don't sleep or care about light. It's all at night for the living humans, and night makes things scarier for us. Living humans seem weak.
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| I offered to show Jimmy on the doll where the bad man.... Nevermind. Amanda was selected to participate. When Jimmy touched a part of the doll, Amanda reacted with the same limb. It was pretty cool. |
Now, I know, it’s a show. But I kept an open mind. Last year
I remember thinking randomly that I had not been to a funeral for a loved one
since childhood. This year we have been to four funerals and we lost our dog.
It’s been a tough year for loss, but I am equipped to deal with these stresses
in an adult fashion, and I don’t think I’m at any risk of relapsing over
anything that happens to me or others; I have a solid foundation and a great
group of men in recovery that keep me grounded.
But..
I love things that make me think. Wonder, maybe, is a more appropriate
term. I believe in God in that he speaks through me or others and that it is
part of my program of A.A. That doesn’t mean I believe in a God, your God, or
heaven or hell. It just means that I use the term God a lot when I say my
little prayers, and when I really need the universe to look after somebody.
Some of us in the program call it Good Orderly Direction. G.O.D. I like that.
I say that to say this. Whether or not there are any of
those things listed above is irrelevant to me. I try almost every day to not be
a piece of shit, and I hope that I get a little farther away from the person I
was before I went to prison over five years ago. But after losing so many loved
entities this year, I keep looking up at the starts and sincerely hoping that
there is something more after this. And I find comfort in thinking that Willie
is somewhere in the spirit world chasing a tennis ball that never stops. And
that my Aunt Jerry is up there living without pain.
Somewhere, between the last moments of life, and the first
moments of death, must be a quiet place where nothing hurts, everything shines,
and everybody you love is at their peak. And whether that’s just synapses
firing off randomly due to a spreading lack of oxygen, or a preview of the pearly
gates, that could be the happiest moment of our lives. And maybe if there is
somewhere for our spirit to wander around after our body is burned or buried—or
I suppose in some cases eaten by wolves or maybe even cannibals—we can have a
positive impact on lives from another angle.
All of the things that gave us the chills last night were
coordinated, staged, rehearsed, etc. But they all were done really well. And
they all made me wonder: where do we go from here?
Either way, no more fucking funerals, 2019.
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| Our hostess with the mostess, Jimmy. |
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| Zoom in. What do you see/. |
