Hello from the Cold!

Halloween - one of my all-time favorite holidays - is coming up. While I have every intention of indulging in the candy, the costume-foolery, and all manner of otherworldly shenanigans, I'd like to honor the coming Day of the Dead holiday with something a bit more serious and spiritual.

I'd like to take you on a soulful walk through four very different graveyards. You may want to bundle up for this, because it's guaranteed to give you a chill.

Walking Among the Dead

By Yours Truly

A reader reached out to me some years ago with a story about Soviet cemeteries. One, in particular, that had been visited by a family friend of his shortly before the fall of the Iron Curtain. This was in response to an essay I’d written about the lost cosmonauts of the Soviet Union, which had stirred up some deep emotions for him.

The sudden resurfacing of this memory, this old story, stirred up some deep emotions for me as well. It came right on the heels of the current crisis in Israel-Gaza, although my reader’s story had no connection to terrorism, the middle east, or even the kinds of long-standing conflicts we’re watching play out. His story, in fact, started long after the bodies had been buried, once the outrage, the disbelief, and the wrath had run their course.

It was a walk among the dead, you could say. One that ended up taking me far beyond that reader’s original account. It pulled me into my own story, my own memories. While his tale began in a desolate place at the tail end of the Cold War, mine – a sequel of sorts – picked up in a modern city on the brink of a Renaissance, then went on to a rural outpost next to a college town. It finishes, at least I hope, at the brink of infinity.

Cold Podcast

This is an all-time Cold favorite for this time of year. It's an intimate portrait of my home - a nearly two-hundred-year-old real life haunted house. It's a place that I love; one filled with soul and spirits. We've added to our home's history by loving, laughing, marking our kitchen doorframe with the growth lines of our children - two of whom are away at university now. Many of you have been here with me since they were little, still dressing up in costume for Halloween and skipping away to go trick-or-treating. Pour yourself something that burns when it goes down and have a listen.

Larry's Music Box

I think you will love Prague Cello Quartet's Phantom of the Opera. It's exciting, epic, heroic and I'm just dying to see these men in concert!

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Daily Lines

Here are a few sentences from the Cold War detective noir I've been working on. I think you'll find this fits in well with the season and the themes we've been grappling with this week.

Bombay, 1959

Bombay appeared to be in good spirits. A cacophony of horns blared through her congested streets, interposed by the cries of street vendors peddling their wares.

Semyonov remembered Mahashivratri, “The Night of the Great Shiva,” was about to begin and celebrants were preparing for their all-night vigils. Anu had mentioned it to him yesterday, and he’d been looking forward to the spectacle.

“Chai! Chai,” a skinny young man from one of the tea stalls called. He gave a wink to The Great Detective and poured three steaming hot cups without even looking down. Next to him, sticky-fingered waifs offered syrupy fried dough and street sweets made of condensed milk flavored with saffron, cardamom and rose water. Other boys sold books and magazines, fruit juices and scarves dyed in sunset colors that bled all over each other. Most plentiful of all were the fresh flower stalls. Those were for religious offerings and going fast.

Although the sun was already in descent, it was still high enough that the soot-covered buildings cast long shadows over this throng of people, all of whom seemed to move as one—an undulating sea of humanity with a purpose. There was a charge to the air, a spiritual jubilation that cut through the usual hustle and bustle. On days like this, it felt like good would triumph over evil.

It was hard to believe that beneath these streets was another world; one impervious to the spirit of Mahashivatri. It was a world that invited a sparse population of lepers, lost children, and corpses. It tolerated clandestine meetings between illicit lovers, thieves, or killers if they conducted their business in whispers. Gamblers and opium addicts came and went, too, as did current and former spies. A labyrinth of rooms and tunnels of no particular design or function awaited them there. First come, first served.

May only the best spirits follow you,

Victoria

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