Hi, it’s October—the best month & my birthday month—which means you can take 28% off paid subscriptions until the 31st.
This is a somewhat (strange) companion post to last week’s on superstitions. You can read that in full if you become a paid subscriber. Either way, thanks for reading.
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The energy is palpable, the rain’s made everyone go crazy. Weeks of this. At least it feels like it. A month of rainy Saturdays has unzipped our minds. Like lightning has struck close by. Hairs on their ends and charred bark on trees. I only tolerate it because it’ll turn the leaves to their fall colors.
It’s Charlotte who calls out the vibe shift as we share sushi on the Lower East Side before we’re supposed to go to a party. Something is brewing. Maybe it’s just us who have gone crazy. We agree we need to cast some spells, although neither of us really know how. Even in our most psychic, mind-melded moments, we know we’re not witches. We have to google these things.
After a brief inquiry into online magic tips, I suggest we do a honey jar spell. It’s meant to make romantic situations sweeter. It’s simple, more of a symbolic gesture than ritual. Charlotte says we can do it for each other. We’re not so foolish to cast love spells, given all the warnings about infringing on someone else’s autonomy. Magic or not, you can’t make people love you. But really, both of us have revealed that we’re superstitious in our ways. It’s harmless if we’re careful. We gather the supplies then end up busying ourselves with other things like drinking wine and getting ready for a party where we won’t know anyone. I eat Halloween candy on her bed then cut my bangs. These are our rituals.
Before we leave for the party, I put on red eye shadow. Last winter, I started doing this to copy Madeline. She looked so cool and intense. Oedipus eyes, she said. I text someone this exact thing. It’s hot to be driven to your wildest ends. To be driven mad by yourself. At the party, I realize the red eye shadow is a protective spell. Ideally, it would scare off men who otherwise would put their hands on your shoulder to move you out of the way for their dart game. To have wild eyes is to tell others that you no longer want to talk about desire, but to become desire itself.1
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According to the etymology section on Wikipedia, a weakened sense of the word spell was delight in the 1500s. A strong incantation becomes more intense as it is repeated.
I look at the Wikipedia article for incantations because I don’t know how else to describe the intensity I’ve been feeling lately. Nor do I know how to write about intensity, probably because I’m still scared of it. Like I’m scared of actually casting spells. The uncanny is its own intensity because of its strange familiarity. It’s inexplicable, too. Do you know how to put words to it? How do you describe the feeling? I know you’ll know it when you feel intensity, but will you be able to describe it? What happens when / if the intensity you feel becomes shared? Will you no longer be insane?
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But the uncanny is driving me crazy. My senses have shifted. Everything has an edge to it that is excruciating in the most pleasant way possible. I tell Charlotte I feel seconds from exploding. Though I have no idea how that would feel. Either I will or everything will blow up in my face. Maybe this is why I walk us twenty minutes in the wrong direction when I should know my way home by now.
On an unremarkable weekday, I’m overwhelmed by the colors cased in the fruit stands along Canal. I stop to look at the globes of grapes packed in tight. It takes everything in me to not buy a bunch and eat every last one. The star fruit is an especially bright fuchsia. Somehow even though these are textures I can’t touch, I can still feel them. I can taste everything without putting a single thing into my mouth. I don’t know when my senses dulled, but they’re usable again and in full force. My friend listens to me spin clouds of nonsense. He laughs at me. It’s difficult to hear each other over all the street noise. Or maybe it’s the noise in my head that attunes me to a different frequency.
Instead of fruit, we buy some desserts. Egg tarts and Japanese cheesecakes in three flavors. I regret not buying a whole cake. Instead of cutting the walk short, we linger a little longer before heading back to the office. A new impulse towards too much rather than restriction. All day all I can think is more, more, more. Everything is shifting fast. I’m not being conservative or slow or careful. I have a desire to attack the separation of life and desire. I have a new feeling.
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It feels new.
Can I remind you that it is?
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What I guess I mean when I talk about intensity is a desire to be totally overcome. In other words, to be possessed. I spend my days trying to get control of my body, but I can’t. Running just to exhaust myself. I sprint in ten minute intervals. But nothing works. I lose myself to feeling. What I’m rushing towards, I have no idea.
The body, sexuality, the desire to sleep in the morning, the liberation from labour, the possibility to be overwhelmed, to make oneself unproductive and open to tactile, uncodified communication: all this has for centuries been hidden, submerged, denied, unstated.
At the party I feel possessed. Walking around, dazed. Trying to understand the art that looks like mall airbrush t-shirts. I watch people do whippits from balloons. Conversations begin and fizzle out fast. These people know each other intimately and I only know them strangely. A dog wanders around in a sweater. I pick him up so he’s not stepped on. There’s red light coming out of rooms with cracked doors. Where people go towards darkness. I’m there in body, but I don’t know where my spirit’s gone. I could float if I lifted a single foot. Outside on the patio, I run into an acquaintance from another life. I recognize his face without knowing his name. This feels fitting.
I almost send unkind messages to someone who hurt me and that I’m suspicious doesn’t care that they did. (Language, when it is freed from the sublimations which reduce it to the code and makes desire and the body speak, is obscene.) I would regret this. An ungenerosity of spirit. I can be that mean, too. Charlotte gently tells me no. I’m laughing because she saves me once again. Sometimes saying nothing is the right thing, although I’m so often doing the opposite. (The silence, the uncanny, the “unstated,” that which remains to be said, frightens.) Sometimes I’m better for being held back. (The new subject is collective and does not speak. Or speaks when it wants to. Silence: a hole.) Sometimes I tap my forehead after I’ve spoken to remind myself that some things should be kept inside my brain. A spell, too.
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Psychoanalysts like Freud and Marett considered the practice of magic as a response to stress. That practicing magic is practical rather than religious. Spell casting is meant to bring about a certain end. A fertility ritual, for example. A love spell. The only rule is that you must bear responsibility for how things turn out. An acceptance that you meddling could or could not bring the desired result.
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There are certain spells I’ll tell you that work, for better or worse. Running through their neighborhood. You’ll seem crazy, but nothing you can do will prove you otherwise. To sleep with your books in order to better understand them. An invitation not to get up this morning, to stay in bed with someone, to make musical instruments and war devices for yourself. You should know the symbolism of flowers so that when you bring someone one, you’ll get what you give. Fill the bathtub with warm water, submerge yourself to swim through their dreams.
Dreaming of fire will bring it to your enemies’ home—or so I’ve heard. Don’t go to sleep thinking about flames. Be especially careful not to curse. I’ve found this also to be true: the second you try to forget someone, they come back to haunt. You have the power to banish ghosts whenever you want. You don’t have to befriend them anymore. Throwing salt into the fields you once wanted to thrive is a protective spell. If there isn’t a field nearby, you can get the same result if you say, you will never touch me again.
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It’s uncanny. I can’t explain it to you. I’m not spooked anymore, although the fear of jump scares will never quite go away. I try to open doors without flinching. If it’s all honey, I can’t get enough. I am putting my fingers into the jar. Inside there’s a piece of paper covered in incantations. All that I want. Then I put my fingers into my mouth. I’m crazy—or I’m being crazy. I don’t know if there is a meaningful difference. I’m fine with this. I didn’t know what was possible until it became possible. As if I conjured this, out of nowhere, so much sweetness.
I hold a spoon under my tongue. Ice cream someone else bought and offered me three different flavors. I sit cross-legged on the floor. Someone’s hand ruffles my hair. Another protective spell. I let myself feel safe because I am safe. Madeline told me recently that my world is big enough no matter what happens. She’s right. A world of my own making that is big and beautiful and safe.
All italicized sentences in this piece come from Radio Alice.