Tag: holiday

A Happy Halloween

Holiday

A Happy Halloween to all! This is Henry II, so named because when I was little I had a plastic skull model I named Henry. That first Henry was glow-in-the-dark. He didn’t have glowing eyes or attached candles, but he did have individual teeth I had to glue in one at a time (they glowed too). After putting the model together, I was so pleased with him, he was given top shelf status in my bedroom. My dad, who himself had a taste for the macabre, didn’t protest. Friends of the family who visited however, did have questions. Ah well… girls were so not expected to be weird or different.

Halloween was a big deal in my house. My father insisted on handmade costumes and handmade decorations. He was an artist and set designer, and had also worked as a display artist for major department stores. He knew his stuff.

I love that during Halloween the uninhibited is welcome, encouraged. The strange, the macabre, the garish, even the tacky.

But Henry isn’t tacky, is he? Nah… And he is ever-present by my desk. A good companion with glowing eyes.

For more of my photos that suit the Halloween season, check out my Memento Mori series.

Have a happy Halloween!

~ Nellie

Photo © Nellie Levine

It’s just about giving thanks

Personal
26 November… not spending my day baking

In two days it will be Thanksgiving, and if everything goes as planned I’ll be hanging out with the love of my life, enjoying a Lord of the Rings movie marathon. This year the family is dispersed, so it’s me and him, on our own… no big cooking to do, no feasts to time perfectly, no desserts to bake one after the other… Of course I’ll miss the family (and we’ll be getting together over the weekend anyway), but at the same time, I’ll enjoy the day off together (as long as he doesn’t get last-minute, panicked emails from clients that drag him away).

Thanksgivings don’t rate highly for me anyway. I have too many memories of bleak-spirited, poorly-funded, inadequately-fed Thanksgivings. I think this may have had something to do with the fact my 32 year-old mother had died and been buried so soon before the holiday, why on earth would my father have felt like celebrating gratitude? I’ve also had my share of very weird, very awkward, and terribly uncomfortable ones… the ones where you’re not personally invited, you’re only attending as someone’s guest, and in some cases, you’re the only “ethnic” (being Polish and Italian) one there.

Nah, I’ll be okay without Thanksgiving this year. Thanks, yes, those I give, every single day. I am grateful for my life and for everyone in it, and for this amazing world, as terrible as it can be sometimes.

Thanks for reading,

~ Nellie