Perhaps this week I will remember to upload the index redirect page. There's always a chance! In the future we won't have this problem, because there will be links on the index page for the whole week. Then I'll start to forget to upload the page itself.

Autumn rains are underrated. Spring rains get the poets all het up, because of the showers / flowers business; summer rains are business as usual, expected, a break from the heat with all the celestial theatrics. Autumn rains are workmanlike, and seem like a demolition crew going about their business with no particular haste. Late autumn - and that’s what we’re in, no use kidding ourselves, it’s nearly done - never seems to have the stern angry rains, the despairing downpours you might associate with the end of the last bits of green. You would expect something hard to come along and knock off the last leaves. But no: steady disassembly. The leaves on the sidewalk look like skinned lizards when the rain ends. The piles are sodden and intimate a rot en route. (I hate that line, it just happened; sorry) But you think: it’s the trees’ last drink. It’s moisturizer for a parched face. It’s an apt ration of gloom.
I like it.

Autumn ends and nothing replaces it. Winter comes with the first permanent snow; between the end of October and the first snow that stays there’s just a brown expanse of nothingness, a placeholder, an empty set of parentheses. A mannikin holding a pair of cymbals. Get on with it, we think - but I think that’s a mistake. The vacant days of the interstitial fortnight is unique. A stage without a play. I look forward to it.

It gets cold here, and Brazil enheatenates. Not that I’d know! The messages from Daughter have slowed to the expected trickle, as we were warned. As every parent should expect, post-flight. When you were out of the house after high school, how much time did you think about your parents?

But it scrapes, just a little.

It’s the sort of tickle that makes you think it might scrape a lot, down the road, but you salve that patch in advance. This is the new job: intermittently corporeal ghost.

At least I’m sane. After this last week that seems a precious commodity. Twitter, it struck me, is for some a schizophrenia simulator - all those voices, never stopping, always pushing, always tweaking you, always agreeing, always goading. Whatever madness you want validated, it’s there. Whatever madness you suspect exists, it’s in evidence. Whatever evil you want confirmed, others are shouting it; whatever argument made against the forces you’ve decided are legion, and growing, it’s being made, and you feel compelled to join.

There were always unhinged people, but they didn’t have a place like Twitter to help them. I’m not blaming Twitter for making people awful. I can’t even blame awful people for making Twitter so maddening. You almost want to thank the awful people for their willingness to use the soapbox.

It’s revelatory.

That’s the word I keep coming back to these days: everyone seems intent on revealing the worst part of themselves, often in a rush to prove their virtue. Some mistake obstreperous speech for virtue, because the Cause is Just and therefore everyone outside the tribe - the ever-shrinking, constricting tribe - is the enemy. Rude speech is associated with honesty, because the old bourgeoise values of civility weren’t respected by the other side, or because not dialing up your abuse to 11 is considered equivocating with evil, or something.

The people who think like this don’t act like this in real life, because real life requires a set of assumptions about everyone you meet: we all have something in common. There is a shared culture, frayed as it seems at times, and we all assume that the nice lady in the supermarket isn’t ONE OF THEM, and we don’t ask her WHERE SHE STANDS, just as we don’t harangue the check-out clerk about their position on THE ISSUES OF THE DAY. And even if our neighbor has a lawn sign with which we disagree, we would rush over if their house was on fire and help.

Wouldn’t you? And if your house was on fire, would you push away a neighbor who’d come to help because he had the wrong lawn sign?

If the political climate is indeed a pile of tinder and people of note and consequence spend their time on Twitter flicking matches, then they have revealed themselves to be eager for the fire, because they believe it will be purifying, and they believe they live in a house of stone that will still be standing after the blaze runs through the countryside. They’ve embraced a dangerous idea: a few define all. Everyone on the other side can be held to account for the words and deeds of a small group. Should be. Must be.

Sometimes this is correct: there are tenets that define movements, and it’s fair to ascribe assent to the general majority of the ideas. But we are losing our ability - willfully abandoning the ability to recognize the difference between left and liberal, right and alt-right. We are sloughing off - with relief, in many quarters - the rote obligation to respect the other side’s ability to have good intentions, and instead of believing that the well-intentioned ideas are wrong and lead to unfortunate results, we presume malice in the hearts of half of our countrymen.

There’s a way out, but it requires humility, a little shame, the ability to decouple current events from the loop running in our heads, and a devotion to something transcendent, greater than ourselves.

These are not found in abundance in the people who govern us and conduct the national conversations.

I was at a party on Saturday night. Everyone got along. Because we wanted to. Also because we had to, but it didn’t come to that, because we wanted to.

It’s not that hard if you want it. Not everyone has to want it and not everyone will. But that’s no excuse for giving up.

Now please invalidate everything I just wrote based on something intemperate I said X years ago, which will utterly devastate my argument. Or consider this ordinary vista I saw on the streets last week.

You might think this indicates caution, right? Sure. Don't walk here.

Somoene walked there and sunk. Down the same street:

More warning. And this time:

There are better ways to leave one's mark on the world.

Boo:

Did anyone expect ghosts? Maybe they did.

That would have been a problem, because after a while the viewer realizes that no ghosts will be showing up. I’m not sure when that point would be. Probably when the final credits rolled.

We meet our young hero, talking to a blind man who hangs around the docks making cryptic pronouncements.

He goes on board, and is somewhat unnerved because it’s ominously lit, and meets . . .

SKELTON KNAGGS. He’s “Finn the Mute,” because he’s Finnish and says nothing. He spends a lot of time . . . sharpening his knife.

But then we meet the captain, and he seems a solid fellow, full of aphorisms and manly wisdom.

"Hmm . . . 'Who does not heed the rudder shall meet the rock.' Does that have implications for our professional relationship"

"Why of course. Every ship has a wireless officer, and brother, we're going to telegraph everything."

Another good question:

“Hmm, wonder if this might enter into the plot later on.”

Yes, it does. It becomes loose, and while it’s quite dangerous, the captain doesn’t seem to be impressed by the situation. The captain, we believe, is a Leader of Men who has to keep himself above the petty concerns of the moment, like an enormous hook swinging wildly around the deck, knocking people in the head.

As the voyage goes on, the shot selection becomes more ominous.

The ship, I should note, doesn’t look like a ship at all.

Eventually we realize that the captain may be going slowly insane. That’s about it. There’s no particular reason why. Just one of those things, I guess. There’s a Shocking Ending that’s satisfying, and then bang! Happy Ending. It has the atmospheric dread of Val Lewton's other work, but it’s not “Seventh Victim” level good. It’s just okay.

I’d still watch it again.

That's your Halloween movie this year. A ghost was implied. A ghost was not delivered.