It is carving pumpkins and then roasting the seeds, watching old scary movies and eagerly anticipating nightfall, when you can light the jack-o-lanterns and ready yourself for ghostly visitors, lovely princesses, and a whole host of other child-sized creatures. Yes, you can even fondly recall when you would spend a whole month planning your costume for this big night, when you traveled the streets with candy bag in tow, one eye on the haunted house across the street and another and your next stop, instead of offering sweets from the cozy warmth of your own home.

It is a magical time, when you are both who you are and you aren't; a glimmer of the creature you rarely let out in the daylight or the flash of inspiration you hope to carry into your daily life.  You are playful and wild and more than a little devilish.  You celebrate the here and now, the what might be, and the what was in a swirling confluence of energies, invoking the powers of the spirits among us.

And yet perhaps the most exciting part of Halloween, after the candles burn out in their hallowed out pumpkin shells, and the bowls of candy are empty, the last child having knocked at your door an hour ago, is that quiet hush broken only by the chill breeze and the rustle of leaves outside.  You hear only the faint echo of the children's cheerful babble and the melodramatic music from your horror movies.  You relish the whispers in the dark, the promise of deep dreams influenced by the festivities and thinning boundaries between worlds, the pregnant silence full of otherworldly possibility.  This, this is Halloween.