“Christmas Day itself is always bittersweet, because it's the last day of that beautiful magick that's been building up like a tidal wave for the past month. In just a week it will be hard to even remember what it's like. I'll be brokenhearted at the thought of it being gone again for an entire year.”

“August 1The harvest season has finally arrived. Today marks its opening. Our next stop on the wheel of the year will be the autumn equinox. I've always seen the opening of the harvest as a kind of stairway we walk down to reach the dark and magickal part of the year where all the good things await. The cool, comforting energy that feels more like home than any place can. Today is the landing at the top of the stairs. All we have to do is put one foot before the other, and before you know it, we'll be watching The Great Pumpkin again.”

“Can you believe it's been over seventeen years since I've touched snow? Since I've heard that soft, comforting sound it makes as it crunches beneath your boots? It won't be much longer. I can feel it in my bones. Soon I'll have snow again. I'll stand in it and look up at the stars until I can no longer feel my feet.”

“When I try to picture heaven, I see a place where it's always December, every radio station plays hair bands, and every time I check my pockets they're full of Hershey's Kisses. There's a Christmas parade on every street, every day is my birthday, and the sun always sets at 4:58 p.m.”

“I caught a glimpse of my shadow today. It's usually so hard to see because it always hides behind me. It's so much easier to see everyone else's.”

“Normally Halloween was like Christmas for me. I would anticipate it for weeks, decorating myself and the house, as well as strolling around the neighborhood, admiring everyone else's decorations. Nothing lifts my spirit like a scarecrow in the front yard.”

“Morphic field. That's what it's called when a certain kind of energy pattern is repeated over and over until it creates something like an aura. This prison, for example. All of the hatred, ignorance, pain, humiliation, and greed constantly being put out by everyone here has created one hell of a negative morphic field. The thing about morphic fields is that they behave like magnets. Like attracts like. It draws more of the same energy to itself, and it touches everyone who comes here. The people who come to see me immediately feel disgust, anger, and repugnance for the kind of people they have to deal with here. It also explains why every new batch of guards who come to work here are a little more brutal and ignorant than the last. As the morphic field grows increasingly worse, it draws in the kind of people who resonate with it.”