My inner child's insistence at embracing Christmas has proven fruitful this year. I will never love another holiday like I love Halloween. I never have, even as a child waiting for Santa Claus. It's a nice feeling, but never the same. After plans to take pictures at a nearby farm fell through this afternoon, I decide to go for a walk instead. A short one, as it gets dark early now, and somehow I don't feel nearly as safe as I did when I wandered the neighborhood after dark in October. It's funny how you can feel like you're in a spooky movie, but still feel safer, more at home, than on the most benign of days. I snap a picture of the landscape before me; a part of the neighborhood that I remember taking a few pictures of in October, and suddenly I feel so far away from those days. I remember looking at this same stretch of street, longing to get lost, to find the portal that would trap me in a time loop where October never had to end. And yet...it ended. ...