People look through everything they see –
There’s so many other things to be.
—Rickie Lee Jones
Well it’s Halloween weekend, and I’ve made the dorkiest nerdiest costume that I’ve ever done, although I MUST say, it RAWKS! in its total accuracy. I had planned on being a gas pump, which was infinitely more scary in a real way this year, but couldn’t find a big box that I could encompass myself in and really look right. So I had to invent Professor Elderina Moonshnoggle, Hogwarts Instructor of Transmogrification (Ok you nerds, is transmogrification in there with some other named professor?, so sue me, she’s a substitute teacher.).
It’s the battered witch hat, cool ornamentation about the neck, brocade high necked shirt under the velvet robe I designed (?) myself, and hand-made wand. I’d not made a handsewn costume in a while, and it is truly as much of a pain as I remembered. I detest sewing unless I have a completely driven head of steam up and absolutely must see my inner vision become reality, which is a peculiar thing for a costumer to admit. But I really, really, am NOT a seamstress. My vision, however, pushes me through.
So I design the robe, I draw up the construction sketch (I don’t bother with patterns except my own, they make me crazy), measure and cut it out, I sew it, and I am finished in about 5 hours — and it’s suspiciously resembling my choir robes in high school–OH NO! I’ve reinvented the wheel for no reason!, I think to myself at first. But with the other garments in place with it, after I had a trial run today, I believe it is, how you say, Ffffffffabulous!. It really will be movie-screen perfect by tomorrow. I’ll probably wear it to the opening of Goblet of Fire too in November, because I DESERVE to have more occasions to be ridiculous, I get so few these days. I mean, if you’re going to have people assume you’re a nerd, you might as well be a rabid one, why not?.
One thing that’s very nice about getting older is that you cease to give a damn about what anyone else thinks of you. Since I tried to aspire to that even in youth, it is a sense of release to be rid of the last vestiges of that nagging twinge of embarrassment over such silly things as peer pressure when one gets to be of a certain age.
Halloween has always been my special holiday, my swan song, a treasured day of me-ness in my childhood. It was for me, the day I got to truly express what I would RATHER have been looking like on every day of the year, and even now remains close to that. In a perfect world, there would have been so many great things I wanted to do and be. A flight of fantasy that is healthy, releasing, and sometimes awe-inspiring. I think this a beneficial thought process in life: people should define themselves occasionally with costumes to spawn some new behaviours or at least thoughts. Why won’t people stand up and do Halloween justice? What’s wrong with looking extremely terrifying or ridiculous or gorgeous for a day or two? Why are there still scores of people that still have that wall up that they insist on as “moderation” where this holiday is concerned? Some insist it is a holiday strictly for children, and sadly it appears they have lost the ability to be inner-children anymore.
But please, think about this: in a world where Harry Potter books are selling out to adults almost before the release date, Star Wars still merchandizes off the charts, and aliens and the occult figure into most TV shows’ conversations or scenarios, not to mention the Buffy the Vampire Slayer cult (Hi Coop), I think most adults are merely closeted on this issue.
I think they need outing.
There is a hollow place inside them waiting, just waiting.
I ponder this empty zone each year at work when there is the inevitable office party that involves wearing (or more accurately, with 50% of the attendees NOT wearing) bad or very abbreviated costumes to a lunch or desert party while there is a palpable and excruciating rift in sentiment on this issue and the dorky tie-wearing guys and silly “Oh I couldn’t think of anything” women stand around and subtly try to passive-aggressively discipline the rest of the childish world by being literal stuffed shirts.
You know their type; they’re the ones who are kingpins of small powers in the business; won’t say a word until they get smashed at a company Christmas party and then you come to know what preposterous zeros they are in the creative thinking department. The button-down folks who bring you things that are “sensible”…. like suggesting that war will heal an economic deficit, for example…. I mean, this only brings to mind my most recently discovered favorite quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”
I realize this Halloween balking is the symptom of something much larger indeed. I think we need to clean up this country! Perhaps this world! Have a giant costume bash to determine who should stay on this ark of a planet, and who should go! The stuffed shirts should GO. We’ll just have to do our own administrating and some accounting, but what the heck. The rest of the bad air would go out with them. Purge!
(Or maybe it’s just that they can’t figure out how to make a successful Dale Carnegie costume.?) Truly, sewing or not, the world needs more costumers, and if you’re not a costume-ee, think about the reason behind that this weekend. Get out a paper bag and scissors and your most clever line. Cross dress! Do SOMETHING.
Kick the cobwebs out of your mind and get them onto your doorway, where they belong.
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