one day, you'll refer to me as grampula

I was thinking about how it never really feels like Halloween. Having a penchant for theatricality, makeup, costumes, gothic styles, eerie themes and so on, it would seem natural that I would be very inclined to fully and completely get into the spirit of such an event. When you're a kid, you live for these things. The elementary schools are seasonally themed all year and it's easy to intensely feel the approach of any holiday. You talk about it with your friends, you convince your parents to decorate, you live and breathe the excitement.

As an adult, you're busy and too wrapped up in things to notice something like Halloween. If you don't have anyone around for reciprocal encouragement, it's even worse. That's not to say you can't enjoy its approach; if you really go out of your way to make the entire month feel like Halloween, it certainly can. If you have the conviction to dress up almost every day, turn your apartment into a lair of atmospheric ghoulishness, etc. it can feel more than ever like Halloween. As the years go by, the increasing amount of effort it takes is certainly worth it, but somehow I've felt too apathetic to realize it to its full potential. I believe the key is really just finding like-minded individuals to get excited with. As I'm sure you'll agree, it's not nearly as much fun dressing up by yourself.. but don't let that stop you.

Perhaps some future Halloween I'll be wearing my vampire dentures, my hand-knit cape and my black Depends, slowly swooping and wheezing around the grounds of the seniors' home. If the nurses don't come to medicate me to a more serene state, maybe I'll inspire the rest of them. It's never too late, after all.

are you serious? hopefully not

I think fall is my favourite season. Early fall. Plenty of rain and beautiful, dreary days alongside warm, comfortable ones. The weather doesn't confine you to the indoors like in the dead of winter, nor does it give you the scorching feeling of an ant under a magnifying glass. There's definitely something more atmospheric about it than the spring. The arrival of the fall also means the near approaching of Halloween.

I think there should be a Halloween every month. Sure people would lose their enthusiasm, but it really is a great experience when you pay attention. I think back to a couple of years ago when a coworker of mine decided to casually throw a hat and a couple of props together, don a moustache and show up at work. The costume was not important, but the fact that she took this opportunity to have some fun and not be self-conscious about it illustrates the antithesis of what so many of us consistently do wrong: we take ourselves seriously.

I attended a seminar a few years back which involved a speaker addressing this very subject. Recounting her decision to go grocery shopping while wearing the old "glasses with fake nose and moustache" gag, she expressed that kids get it, while adults are uptight and alarmed by it.

I'm not going to try to make some revelatory point about this; it's common sense, and doing so would only make me sound arrogant. What I'll say, though, is that while I'd call myself fairly sentimental, I loathe tradition. As I see it, tradition for tradition's sake is creeping ridiculously close to idiocy. I don't understand how so many people think their lives are supposed to be a certain way, people are supposed to do certain things and the question to concern yourself with most is "What would the neighbours think?" Life isn't supposed to be anything. The world isn't going to grind to a halt because you did something out of the ordinary. So even if you're not able to appreciate the absurd in everything, at least enjoy yourself on Halloween.