fantasy costume | Powerful Goddess Portraits

If I’m lazy and I can’t come up with a costume,

I would just wear a slip

and write ‘Freudian’ on it.

Julia Stiles

Of all the holidays in the year, I can definitely live happily without Halloween. At a Halloween party I attended last year, it dawned on me that there is simply no good reason for ugly people to dress any scarier! But since I love fantasy, pretty costumes, and aspire to be wholly human, I concede that it is necessary to embrace the scary and dark parts of ourselves along with the beautiful, the fleeting moments with the enduring, death with life, pain with pleasure.

From one of the books on personal power I recommended in my previous blog post, Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart:

People have no respect for impermanence. We take no delight in it; in fact, we despair of it. We regard it as pain. We try to resist it by making things that will last–forever, we say–things that we don’t have to ssh, things that we don’t have to iron. Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.

Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When we don’t struggle against it, we are in harmony with reality. Many cultures celebrate this connectedness. There are ceremonies marking all the transitions of life from birth to death, as well as meetings and partings, going into battle, losing the battle, and winning the battle. We too could acknowledge, respect, and celebrate impermanence.

But what about suffering? Why would we celebrate suffering? Doesn’t that sound masochistic? Our suffering is based so much on our fear of impermanence. Our pain is so rooted in our one-sided, lopsided view of reality. Who ever got the idea that we could have pleasure without pain? It’s promoted rather widely in this world, and we buy it. But pain and pleasure go together; they are inseparable. They can be celebrated. They are ordinary. Birth is painful and delightful. Death is painful and delightful. Everything that ends is also the beginning of something. Pain is not a punishment, pleasure is not a reward.

Click on “Leave a Comment” (top left) to share your favorite fantasy. Trick or treat!

xoxox

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Venice Carnival 2014

What happens in fantasy

can be more involving than what happens in life–

and thank goodness for that.

Roger Ebert

Among my favorites in posing, Nhaelle de France

If you can visit Venice only once in your entire lifetime, time it for Carnival and bring the kids! This annual winter festival of masquerade and fantastic costumes can be traced back to the beginning of the 14th Century when months before Lent, everyone in town wore masks to break down social barriers and playfully defy differentiation between nobility and the common people.

Today, an international crowd of 3 million revelers congregate and make time to dress up in their original and fantastic creations or an elegant wardrobe of authentic period pieces. Those in full regalia are so very kind and accommodating in holding a pose for your camera. Can you imagine the time and effort each costume takes to create and transport, never mind wearing them all day in heat or cold for the two weeks of the fabulous Venice Carevale. I’ll let the photographs speak eloquently for themselves. You bet it wasn’t easy choosing which creations to exclude here.

Click on “Leave a Comment” (above left) to share what your fantasy costume might be.