Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
-W.B. Yeats
On Saturday I couldn't decide if I felt like dressing like a boy or a girl. I'm aware how strange and loaded that statement seems to be, particularly for someone minoring in gender studies, but I don't honestly mean anything by it except just that. Instead I went for a strange kind of mixture that isn't exactly androgynous, in fact I'm sure it's still quite girly, mostly by virtue of pants.
(Could I look any more posessed?)
Pale, nervous girls with black-rimmed glasses and blunt-cut hair lolled around on sofas, riffling Penguin Classics provocatively... But it wasn't just intellectual experiences. They were peddling emotional ones, too. For fifty bucks, I learned, you could "relate without getting close." For a hundred, a girl would lend you her Bartok records, have dinner, and then let you watch while she had an anxiety attack.
--Woody Allen, The Whore of Mensa
Oops! I'm not entirely certain about what happened there! I would like to tell you all that school has overtaken my life and that I am off cultivating all kinds of exciting scholarly pursuits, but alas, it is not so (aside from my project on Plague, which fills me with inappropriate delight). I haven't even been lazy and languid, although I haven't really been wanting for lovely wonderful things either--which is a statement that is insipid to a point where I almost can't stand it--despite the rest of everything else.
Halloween! Was awesome! In the past few years I forgot how much fun it was to do just about anything on Halloween. It makes me feel fidgety and silly all day, unable to sit still in (or even go to) classes, and strange. Where you feel out of place without a costume, and also out of place with one. An impromptu Halloween party ended up being just the ticket to launch me into elaborate imaginings of next year and the one after!
I ended up assembling my costume mostly from bits of things I already had--not much of a stretch, the costume looked like my regular clothing until the addition of the large bow and nest of hair--and just had to buy five yards of pink tulle, some fake birds, and white hair spray. In the end it's always all about the hair. Since I cut it--I trimmed it about a week ago to chin-length--I stuffed the middle bit with extra black tulle and teased the crap (oh, eloquence!) out of the middle bits (I had already curled most of my hair with foam rollers overnight). This worked quite nicely, until I had to go to bed. In the end I tossed some birds and shiny things in there and it worked out wonderfully. I wish it were the kind of hair-do that were socially acceptable on regular days.
Similarly, I wish to find a way to integrate a giant pink bow into my everyday life. It's like having a tail, I imagine, only perhaps better for while one can't do nifty things like balancing or picking things up with it, it swishes around in the most satisfactory manner and floats down stairs in a way that pleases a little morsel of my soul. It is also amusing to consider that one layer of baby-powder was not enough to get me anywhere near starkly white; it too closely matches my pallor! On the other hand, I do believe my skin is noticeably softer after washing the stuff off, so I may have to find a way to integrate it into a beauty regimen.
I ended up assembling my costume mostly from bits of things I already had--not much of a stretch, the costume looked like my regular clothing until the addition of the large bow and nest of hair--and just had to buy five yards of pink tulle, some fake birds, and white hair spray. In the end it's always all about the hair. Since I cut it--I trimmed it about a week ago to chin-length--I stuffed the middle bit with extra black tulle and teased the crap (oh, eloquence!) out of the middle bits (I had already curled most of my hair with foam rollers overnight). This worked quite nicely, until I had to go to bed. In the end I tossed some birds and shiny things in there and it worked out wonderfully. I wish it were the kind of hair-do that were socially acceptable on regular days.
Similarly, I wish to find a way to integrate a giant pink bow into my everyday life. It's like having a tail, I imagine, only perhaps better for while one can't do nifty things like balancing or picking things up with it, it swishes around in the most satisfactory manner and floats down stairs in a way that pleases a little morsel of my soul. It is also amusing to consider that one layer of baby-powder was not enough to get me anywhere near starkly white; it too closely matches my pallor! On the other hand, I do believe my skin is noticeably softer after washing the stuff off, so I may have to find a way to integrate it into a beauty regimen.
Halloween is, in fact, the best thing ever. Sadly it's gone downhill for me in recent years, but this year I am returning to the good Halloweens and am determined to make it a good one. My dad is way into Halloween, and our house has always been kind of epic. None of those inflatable pumpkins and hokey things for us--dad likes to go for the legitimately creepy. I generally hate all things horror movies, haunted houses, hayrides, and things like that because I am scared of everything (not exaggerating). But it's different when it's your house. Dad scares people, and it's so gleeful and fun to watch!
Costumes though, are the real reason Halloween is the most fun. My mom is insanely talented at sewing (no, really. She once made me a spandex unitard-don't ask- and it fit perfect the first time I tried it on. I've seen Project Runway, that is something impressive!) and my costumes were always glorious and amazing. My favorite was from kindergarten, I was a pink unicorn, as I wore my costume just about every day for years after Halloween:
It is amazing. The tail and such are covered in sequins shaped like stars and moons, and I remember being very cross at a kid dressed up as Frankenstein because his head was a cardboard box and he kept dropping things behind me in line so that when he went to pick it up, his monstrous head got stuck in my tail. I was not happy.
The year Batman Returns came out I was Catwoman. This was another costume I loved, and it was awesome. I was a hardcore six-year-old Batman fan, and this was just the best thing ever.
Sadly, I have a shortage of pictures of the costumes for the rest of my life! I can remember every one, and most of the time I was some varient of cat. These are my favorites though! This year, I'm going as an 18th Century-esque chick, which I know is not terribly original, but I just couldn't get all those Marie Antoinette parties out of my head! I will of course take pictures and document the event properly this year, since it's a comeback year!
Costumes though, are the real reason Halloween is the most fun. My mom is insanely talented at sewing (no, really. She once made me a spandex unitard-don't ask- and it fit perfect the first time I tried it on. I've seen Project Runway, that is something impressive!) and my costumes were always glorious and amazing. My favorite was from kindergarten, I was a pink unicorn, as I wore my costume just about every day for years after Halloween:
It is amazing. The tail and such are covered in sequins shaped like stars and moons, and I remember being very cross at a kid dressed up as Frankenstein because his head was a cardboard box and he kept dropping things behind me in line so that when he went to pick it up, his monstrous head got stuck in my tail. I was not happy.
The year Batman Returns came out I was Catwoman. This was another costume I loved, and it was awesome. I was a hardcore six-year-old Batman fan, and this was just the best thing ever.
Sadly, I have a shortage of pictures of the costumes for the rest of my life! I can remember every one, and most of the time I was some varient of cat. These are my favorites though! This year, I'm going as an 18th Century-esque chick, which I know is not terribly original, but I just couldn't get all those Marie Antoinette parties out of my head! I will of course take pictures and document the event properly this year, since it's a comeback year!
First, the most humongous thank you to all the sweet-hearts and love-birds who sent happy blog wishes my way <3 You are all gloriously wonderful and keep me buoyant through dreadful midterms and stressful days! I am so so crazily glad! For ages and ages I never wore this skirt, and now I can't get enough of it. It makes me feel terribly lucky that it sparked my interest in the first place, while strangely suspicious of all the things I haven't grabbed and kept hidden away for months and are now homeless or unloved somewhere. A parade of dejected blouses and skirts. I've been resisting the urge to expunge some chunks of my wardrobe as of late. My closet broke, again, and I've been guiltily subjected to all kinds of things I've never or hardly worn. I always feel a terrific dichotomy going on: on the one hand, I want to toss everything out of the window (and into the pool), and on the other I want to pack-rat it all away like a mad clutter fiend. It's a tormented result, although it seems to resemble the latter part of that sentiment.
I also find, on a totally different and pointless note, that I am much more excited by makeup in the cooler months than any other. I haven't worn quite so much eyeshadow and all in ages, and it's kind of a nice change. I just love little make-up pots and strange containers. I'm such a sucked for packaging, especially things masquerading as functional when really it's just for strange's sake. I also eat a lot of candy. A lot. Most people, when they truly wittness this because I am not exaggerating, are astounded. I have a giant sweet tooth and it is trying to eat all the candy in the world.
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