Everyone who knows me in real life knows I only love one holiday: Halloween! This year has been very exhausting mentally and physically so I couldn’t muster up the will of picking the costume and truly enjoy it. Thought the weather in NY has been great for it on the other hand and people have really embarrassed the Halloween week ( being it falls on Tuesday and all).
In honor of Practical Magic’s 25th! anniversary I’ll be writing about it in the post about fave book to movie post! Even though I believe in very few things in life, I have seen things I cannot explain, know people who believe they see dead people, been to psychics, love some ‘magic and mystery’ like the book previously mentioned but then there are the worst of the ghosts…
They are the people who are very much alive and well but instead of having respect and dignity, they choose to ghost people! If you’re one of the people who went on one date with a person and just ‘didn’t see it going anywhere’ and then simply moved one, you are not the person I’m referring to. One date that didn’t go well,it is what it is. I’m referring to people who strings you along ( friends’, lover, partner in a ‘complicated’ relationship, relatives and such), waste your time, make promises they know will not keep and then disappear into…well, somewhere else. Now, I’ll take Casper kind of a ghost over those any time! Unfortunately, never met those kind of ghosts ( even though I know at least two people passed away in one of my apartments I lived) just the living,breathing kind. As I’m writing about it I realize they deserve same attention those of us on receiving end of ghosting got…bye!
Back to to the season of spooky, dressing up and candy. Being someone else has always been alluring to me,since I can remember. Back in the Motherland costumes were happening after New Year and lasted until Ash Wednesday. It was happening in Yugoslavia, but the costumes were quite limited and it wasn’t as loud. The kids would dress up ( mostly in parents old clothes, gypsy was one of the most popular costumes by far, sometimes pirates and if you had a skillful mom/grandma you could even be something a bit more than that), go from door to door and mostly get fruits,eggs, sometimes money and occasional candy. Then with democracy came weekend parties at my hometown, all over the town and the Sunday before Ash Wednesday a big parade all over the main streets of the city. My mom has partaken in it more than I have at that time ( mostly cause I wasn’t a fan of drinking to obliterating and being part of a group that had a same costume every weekend at a different venue) and I was happy she finally got the outlet that made her happy. Just to give a reference for those who never witnessed it first hand: my mom doesn’t drink, other than socially and never to the point where she’d embarrass herself, so I’d go to a club ( in my skimpy, little outfits in my late teens) and my mom would come around 2am in full costume and pick me and my friends up. It’s just how we rolled.
Then came any ‘holiday’ from the west that was an excuse to party and Halloween was welcomed with open arms. Why would we have two months of dressing up and drinking and partying when we can get an extra day couple of months before we go all out?
I’m more of a thought out, different costume every time kind a gal. My go to costume was often: Mrs. Mia Wallis! At one party I even had a DJ play me the song from Pulp Fiction because I found a partner for my routine I learned for the part. It was one I wore more times than I can remember: white sharp shirt, black pants, black ballet kind of shoes, black bob with bangs wig, red nails and red lipstick that would like Mia’s get smudged by the end of the night . One year I decided to take it a step further with a black corset under shirt and a needle sticking from my chest, but the needle kept falling out ( not for lack of trying to keep it glued on by any means necessary). When I do Halloween I go full on Heidi Klum, obviously with ‘slightly’ smaller budget, but same dedication.
October is my birth month and I really do like the whole vibe about it. I love leaves falling and the sound it makes walking through them, layers of clothes, the colors and almost! all things Halloween related. One thing I’m not a great fan of: scary movies. In my experience real life is plenty scary so I see no reason to willingly watch something that would give me nightmares. To this day I think ‘old’ scary movies with less then ideal visual/sound effects are way scarier than all this new things they’re putting out there. Freddy Krueger is one of those characters I’m still not revisiting all these years later. Talk about creepy!
I’ve already confessed I’m guilty of believing in certain superstitions, love taking cemetery and ghost tours when visiting certain cities and even though I’m yet to find a psychic who will predict/guess something correctly regarding my future I am drawn to the mystic of all of it. Hope you enjoyed the season of October, because now the rush to get those Christmas decorations out is starting!
*** ‘Jeepers Creepers’ by Paul Whiteman and ‘You Never Can Tell’ by Chuck Berry ( and just for this particular costume ‘Broken Doll’ by Paloma Faith)