The Season Of The Witch

The Season of the Witch is a novel by James Leo Herlihy. The story is written in the form of a journal that spans three months in the life of teenage runaway Gloria Glyczwych during the autumn of 1969. Gloria decides to run away from home with her gay friend John McFadden. Both of them have a reason to leave: Gloria wants to find her estranged father, and John wants to avoid joining the Army and being sent to Vietnam. They head from Michigan to New York City, where they meet a host of colorful characters. The novel explores the personal freedoms of the late 1960s, including casual drug use, draft evasion, and homosexuality, and goes beyond that to incest.

Speaking of freedom the 60s have engendered charismatic freedom fighters and great & emblematic figures such as Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela. On the latter we will all agree we have recently lost the greatest morale authority of the 20th and 21st century . More than just a great man he was a great symbol and constant reminder of truism and human values.

This could not have happened at a worst time, I strongly believe the 2010s are to the 21st century what the 60s were to the 20th century. We are globally at a cross road everywhere and every day, the very make up of our souls & values are being stress tested at their maximum but if we are honest by and large and except too few examples of lucidity we have decided to ignore the writing on the wall. The big and only major difference today is that the masses worship superficially the holy consensus and that there is not any leaders having any intent of hunting the witches of intolerance and racism, In Ireland and elsewhere the consumerism and individualistic spell has been casted so effectively in our societies that we collectively have been suffering from apathy and blindness.

In Western Europe we can see the world is struggling in front of our plasma TVs but we have become as shallow as the debates we are watching from the comfort of our couches. There is no more stand up and fight for your rights and not really any will to make any difference.

It is almost like if it was requiring too much effort, it would be too intense and the commitment too heavy to carry. Anesthetized by the status quo and more preoccupied by the banks health and economic recovery Ireland too has also fallen into the trap of morale neutrality, a state of mind set up by modern witches with a simple agenda called short termism.

So I am asking who in Ireland and elsewhere will raise the bar of leadership and help the country to genuinely enter the 21st century I am tired of our predictable tag lines, we need to stop saying that the country is punching above its weight , stop having a subservient position in Europe, stop doing lip service on critical issues such as integration, we don’t want to settle for average and mediocrity no more , we don’t want to celebrate defeats as these were major victories the country has so much & far more to offer than Arthur`s day and drunken leprechauns.

At the beginning I referred to the story of Gloria and John in the 60s in the US I think we need to offer our Irish multifaceted children & colorful youth more than the feeling to run away. I too have sometimes been discouraged but there is some encouraging signs albeit sporadic ones I know but to all the witches carrying their consumerism potions and meagre aspirations I would say be aware this is coming to an end this is no fairy tale but I see the future leaders of the country in the making and I dare to say to you witches it is

OPEN SEASON

Previously posted on a different platform