Witchy Woman : Happy Halloween

SAMHAiN = Halloween Back In The Day
[pronounced sah-win]

"Samhain marked one of the two great doorways of the Celtic year, for the Celts divided the year into two seasons: the light, with Beltane on May 1st, and the dark, with Samhain on November 1st. Whereas Beltane welcomes in the summer with joyous celebrations at dawn, the most magically potent time for Samhain is November Eve, the night of October 31st, known today of course, as Halloween." (source)


If, like me, you get a kick out of all things witchy, or if there are secret pagan urgings lurking beneath your deceptively conventional surface, you may want to do something a little unusual and special before you go to bed tonight. And won't your man be glad!

I kid. This isn't about sex. It's about a great excuse to make a little magic for yourself & some wishes by the light of the (almost) full moon, at the stroke of midnight, on this oh so fine All Hallows Eve...


"In early Ireland, people gathered at the ritual centers of the tribes, for Samhain was the principal calendar feast of the year... the point of conception for the new year...

In every household throughout the country, hearth-fires were extinguished. All waited for the Druids to light the new fire of the year... the gods drew near to Earth at Samhain, so many sacrifices and gifts were offered up in thanksgiving for the harvest.

Personal prayers in the form of objects symbolizing the wishes of supplicants or ailments to be healed were cast into the fire, and at the end of the ceremonies, brands were lit from the great fire... to re-kindle all the home fires of the tribe...

As they received the flame that marked this time of beginnings, people surely felt a sense of the kindling of new dreams, projects and hopes for the year to come." (source)


I love fire & symbolism & the power of making a wish with a focused, ritualized effort. I believe that life itself is magic, and you never know what's going to happen, so you might as well throw your two cents in before it does.

So why not make like an ancient pagan for Halloween and create a lil bonfire action of your own? You don't even need a fire pit or hearth to make it happen. A candle and a fire-proof bowl near the sink would do as well.

And then, you'll need your most heart-felt wish scrolled across a length of paper to burn and a firm, pronounced incantation aimed at whatever gods and goddesses may be hanging low in the atmosphere tonight- like this ancient power spell, meant to be shouted whilst hoisting your lady bits up high for emphasis...

Wonder Twin Powers Activate!
Form Of A Giant Pay Raise!
And The Man Of My Dreams!


Or something. And that should do'er. Then, hopefully, all you have to do is sit back & watch the magicalness begin.

Right Now I'm Really Into... (Part 2)

1. Sonia Rykiel's line for H&M - coming out this December. Love Sonia Rykiel. Love affordable Sonia Rykiel even better.


2. The dreamy-weird video for I Was Born by High Places, which they shot & edited themselves.


3. Lady Gaga's eyelashes on the cover of Flare magazine. Bonus Points: I'm having a major love affair with pink hair at the moment. Been collecting lots of pink hair pics on the ol' desktop. May even go pink myself. Dunno... Thinking about it... Should I?


4. The Daily Grail for leading me to random stories like the one about this creepy projection made by American futurologist, Paul Saffo, that claims that, due to biotechnology & robot engineering, the rich may develop into a new, longer-living species one day. Soon.


5. The Project Runway in a box-style kits at Target. The Fashion & Figure Drawing set is my favorite and reminds me of an old toy I used to have called Fashion Plates. God, I loved that thing. Wish I kept it. May have to Ebay it back into my life.


6. Devendra Banhart's new album, What Will We Be. One of his previous records, Cripple Crow, is a staple around here, and two of the songs off that, I Feel Like A Child & Long Haired Child, tied as top pick for Billy & I's wedding song. So, we wound up just using both, and when Billy coincidentally ended up running the sound booth for a live video shoot for none other than Devendra Banhart and told him that we were using his tunes for our wedding, he was so friendly & flattered & cool, which gave our song choice(s) a touch of kismet. So, yeah, I might be a taddy bit partial to Devendra.


7. Tim Walker's creepy-cool shots of fall fashion re-imagined ala Tim Burton for Harper's Bazaar. (Note To Self: A Tim Walker Appreciation Post Is Long Past Over Due.)


8. Lights' witchy-trippy video for Fire Night... -xo


"I wanted to be a machine." -Andy Warhol

KOSHi Luvs... Frida Gustavsson

Frida. The new iT GiRL of pretty. What's not to love?

Acacia House 1 : Random '08

Marvin Scott Jarrett & The Courtney Love Baby Doll

And, here's the woman behind the inspiration...




Courtney Love - Pretty On The Inside
BABY DOLL (Lyrics)

Here you come sucking my energy and you
Suck it up right off the street
Babydoll
You are sucking my energy
I drill it in my good hole so that i can see
You are so much bigger than me you are,
You are so much bigger than me
Babydoll
My raw hand my fever blister
Watch me watch me disappear
Here she comes her pants undone
All waste and void all waste and void
There you go in your nazi car
Oh baby what a whore you are
She's sits around with her old rag
How can i talk when you've, you've got the gag?
Here you come sucking my energy
Suck it up baby right from the street
Babydoll
In the dark i destroy what i began what i destroy
She hangs in the blossom tree oh
Babydoll just swings for me
Babydoll
Babydoll she's...chemical wedding chemical peel
I knife me and i slash mine and i knife me and i slash mine
Stick it inside of me well here you are just as ugly as me
Drill it in my good hole so that i can see yea
Drill it in my good hole so that i can see yea
Here you come sucking my energy
And you suck it up baby right from the street
Babydoll
She starts to stare into the sun
Now i, i want a cancer that the crooked eye spied
You are mine and my energy cos baby
You are so much bigger than
Babydoll
Little girl she's on the floor
She gets it all cos she's the whore
Little girl she's on the ground
She gets it off of falling falling down
Falling down no matter what
"i am, i am" she says, "i am not free" she says
Help me i am withering
Withering withering

Right Now I'm Really Into... (Part 1)

1. The Ten Most Provocative Ads. (Fashion Indie)

Find more photos like this on CULT

2. Arturo Alonso and his company, Gullwing America, updating the Mercedes-Benz 300SL for today's modern car junkie. (The Cool Hunter)


3. Marina And The Diamonds video for Mowgli's Road. The song is cuckoo, and I love when a cool, artsy chick meets a weird visual effect. (MATD MySpace)


4. Stockyard Oatmeal Stout, a dark beer with an amazing chocolate-coffee flavor that is not too sweet and is as unreasonably addictive as you'd imagine a drink packing the triple-threat-wallop of beer-coffee-chocolate might be. Did I mention it's cheap? And readily available at your nearest Trader Joe's? Two Big Bonus Points, if I'm keeping score. (Trader Joe's)


5. The Perlaki Marton shots of Eniko Mihalik rocking her birthday suit for The Room Magazine #10. (Fashion Copious)


6. Collaged Walls. (Apartment Therapy)


7. Lady Gaga's collaboration with filmmaker, Kathryn Ferguson, for Dazed Digital. (Dazed Digital)


8. Loving Frank : A Novel by Nancy Horan. It's the perfect read to snuggle under the covers with this fall. And you may initially pick it up out of a love for or curiosity about Frank Lloyd Wright, but, I promise, if you read through to the end, you will put it down loving Mamah Borthwick Cheney. (Amazon.com)


9. Refinery 29's pretty two page spread on the new vintage-inspired lingerie trend. (Refinery 29)


10. Kirna Zabete. Okay- before you get too excited, I just want to warn you that if you're like 90% of most people, you can not afford to buy the items you are about to see if you follow this lead (like the bitching deco cuff pictured below, or a Rick Owens' shearling jacket, a Lanvin choker, or the kickiest lil embroidered dress by Jason Wu), so the less masochistic among you might want to refrain from clicking thru. However, if you are lucky enough to be counted among the other 10% who can afford to buy something (BiG CONGRATS!) or if you are among those of us self-injurious fashion wannabes, regularly torturing ourselves over images of beautiful things that we can not afford, then, by all means, CLiCK HERE... (Kirna Zabete)


11. A crinkled brushed twill jacket from Forever 21 that, at $27.80, seriously dampens the fire in my belly that ignited after I stared into the Kirna Zabete vortex of hell for a second too long. (Forever 21)


12. Eastwick. Yes, that Eastwick, the cheesy ABC show that is currently making a mockery of John Updike's classic novel, The Witches Of Eastwick, and looks like a low rent knock off when pitted against the winning combination of Nicholson, Pfieffer, Sarandon, and, well, Cher's star power that brought the book to life on the big screen back in 1987. I know. I know! I'm not suppose to like it. But I do. It's my weekly witchy treat. Okay? Am I not allowed one teensy guilty pleasure?


"I always wanted to be an artist, whatever that was, like other chicks want to be stewardesses. I read. I painted. I thought."
-Janis Joplin

KOSHi illustration - Way Way Back In 2004

I was more and less ambitious when I started KOSHi with a xerox zine back in Fall 2003 and then moved to an online format the following Spring. I was more ambitious for wanting to put out my every doodle and idea faster than I could execute them with anything resembling finesse, and I was less ambitious in that I wasn't really considering that these thoughts and images might stick with me for a life time or longer and that I might want to try rendering them with a little more patience and care just in case. Eventually, that did occur to me, and a balance was struck to where now I can honestly say that I may be moving at a more measured pace, but my work today blows what I was doing back then out of the water. And looking back is much less embarrassing than I though it would be.













* BRiNG BACK THE KOSHi BEAN LOGO!

U Been Lookin 4 Me?

Sssshshshshshshsh.... I'm hiding.