Do Not Go to a Vampire Bar with a Bunch of Baptists or Hunt Vampires in Mexico

Your car will theologically and literally die. And then so will you.

From Nosferatu (1922)

Cassidy Steele Dale writers to equip you with the forecasts, foresight skills and perspectives, and tools you may need to create a better, kinder world.

And one of those ways is to help you not become part of the problem.

A friend and I, when we get really exasperated at work, have agreed that when all this crap is over we’re gonna go hunt vampires in Mexico. My job is to find us an old beater of a car that we can MacGyver back to life if it sputters out as the vampire clan swarms in from above. She’s on weapons.

• (I do not believe vampires are real. They’re literally pretend but spiritually real. Don’t get up on me too much about this, though: I will get the hose.)

Centuries ago, back at the beginning of vampire tales in Europe, vampires weren’t beautiful seducers (that’s an advent of the Victorian era when vampires and sexuality were conflated, ie. Dracula) or even monstrous bloodsuckers, they were merely people who refused to pass into the afterlife when they died. They weren’t like ghosts whose spirits remained to roam to complete unfinished business; they were just people who refused to cross the threshold into the afterlife. They just refused to go.

And because they wouldn’t cross the threshold into the afterlife they could no longer cross any threshold whatsoever. They couldn’t go through doorways unless they were invited through. They couldn’t cross running water. They couldn’t cross from the night into the day at dawn. Thresholds become walls — and then traps. If a threshold forced itself upon them, like the dawn, they would burn or collapse into ash. Any given vampire was trapped between the water and the door and the dawn.

The person they were when they died became the only person they could become forevermore. They could never change for the better after that. They could never heal, never recover, never grow again.

• For a more recent iteration, in the Star Wars series Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader, once they were maimed, could never heal; they could only be sustained by evil and machinery and desire for revenge.

• The Jedi, however, were always part of life and light and organic growth. All Jedi characters wore Earth tones. As Leia progressed from an agent of the state to an agent of life her costuming changed from white to warmer tones. As Luke got closer to the Dark Side he wore darker colors but when his collar finally flopped open in the closing scenes of Return of the Jedi his inner lining beneath was a bright white all along.

• The Jedi, for George Lucas, were a cross of the Knights of the Round Table, the samurai, and Franciscan monks. Their robes are Franciscan. Their tunics are samurai. Their swords of light, their might-for-right, the circle on the Jedi Council floor, and the rest of it are Arthurian knights. When Jedi masters die, they immediately, readily pass into the afterlife.

Saint Francis’ second miracle — the one for which he was canonized — was for when he once said to a tree Speak to me of God and the tree bloomed.

A vampire is the opposite of Saint Francis in every way.

Oh - Very Important Side Note: Never go to a vampire bar with a bunch of Baptists. Not to a bar and “grill” called L’estat’s. Not in Richmond, Virginia. Not in the mid-1990s. When the city probably served as a hellmouth. Because when Baptist Jimmy — because he’s dumb and he’s just gotta evangelize — threatens to break out into a loud rendition of “There’s Pow’r in the Blood” you’re gonna have to punch Jimmy out at the table in the name of Jesus.

• I’m not saying this actually happened or that we threw a lot of cash onto the table and carried him out and his head mighta hit the door jamb on the way out and I mighta had to explain to him later why what he had done was theologically and real-life-y stupid. And I mighta had to use a whiteboard and a marker and a King James Bible and a lot of thunder. I’m not saying that at all. No, on the advice of counsel, I am not.

Where was I?

Vampires are those who refuse to go into The Next Thing. The Next Era.

Now, a bit of nostalgia is fine. Nostalgia just means you had good days worth remembering. And you’re alive now which means you survived. You earned that nostalgia.

Recovering from trauma is fine. Your past may have shaped you but it hasn’t decided you.

But fear of the future? And if your vision of the future is a return to the past? That’s a bit much. Check your teeth. Do they feel a bit pointy? Check your pallor in the mirror? Is your skin grey? Can you even see your reflection any more?

Too much fear of the future will turn your soul dark.

Especially too much fear of the political future. But that future isn’t set yet and we’re going to decide who we’re going to be just you can still decide who you are and who you’re gonna be. So check your teeth, check your lightsaber, and check your ballot.

Don’t get too scared about the future, electoral or otherwise: the doom you fear is coming may be the dawn instead. Be ready either way.

In the meantime don’t get too nostalgic and get lost back there in time because we need you here.

But if you do get lost back there, don’t punch out Jimmy at a table in a vampire bar in Richmond in the 1990s. That’s my job. Allegedly.