I spent October watching leaves die and frequenting Value Village. For an art project at school I built a little girl's shrine to the Virgin Mary out of found objects and candles. I put it in a cardboard box and wrote her prayers on scraps of notebook paper and hung them from the top of the box. I lit the candles inside and it caught on fire, twice. One of the times I was showing it in art class and piece of pink lace caught fire and I had to carry it outside and blow it out. People in art class said they didn't understand it and that it looked messy and flammable. They were probably right.
I watched Carrie with my sister the same night I built the shrine and couldn't stop thinking about how perfect Sissy Spacek's face was for the role. And how perfect her pink dress was for Prom. And how unsafe Carrie must have felt her entire life.
I started thinking about witches. And how women who seemed to have special powers were burned in little towns in front of everyone and how terrible and sexist that was. And how that witchiness feels perfect and special and feminine to me, how sometimes I feel a little witchy when the weather and the levels of hormones in my blood match up just right, and I want to paint my eyes like Siouxie Sioux and wear black lipstick and velvet and veils and cast spells on people I hate.
My friends and I went to a Halloween party last friday. My friend is in a punk band called People Bomb and has parents who like to throw parties and drink a lot and dress up. In the bathroom there were cut up baby dolls hanging from the ceiling and there was a beautiful girl dressed up like a cow with half her head shaved who twitched her nose like a bunny rabbit. I went as Courtney Love. I helped my friend Jacob dress up as Ronald Mcdonald and I did his makeup. We sat around in the living room and talked while old stop motion Halloween specials played soundlessly on the tv. When Patrick and I got tired and it was only 9:30, we decided to walk to Safeway in the rain to get Red Bull and it was perfect and beautiful. There were long yellow lights coming from the streetlamps and Jacob's makeup started to run and he started to look like a scary clown. We were nervous because it was so dark and cold outside and I was only wearing a sheer babydoll dress and ripped tights and a cardigan. Patrick was Kurt Cobain and he wore sunglasses and converse and eyeliner and looked beautiful. We wandered the halls of the Safeway, everything was so colorful and lit up. There were beautiful bottles full of beautiful liquid and different sized boxes... I felt the way people seem to feel when they're high, but I wasn't.
I fell in love with pictures of Ian Curtis. He was so lovely and perfect. My boyfriend looks a little bit like him, so pure and pretty. I love the way pictures are taken of him in black and white, on stage and holding a microphone, he looks the way Jesus should look. I can't think about how he died, it makes his music sound too important to be bearable. It's like everyone was listening and no one was listening at the same time.
Robert Smith is so beautiful.
If you haven't seen the music video for Graveyard Girl, you should. It's so perfect.
Just looking to document October and how lovely it was. Thank you for reading if you did.
