Witches be like…

Going around disguised as a witch. Not with a pointed hat. Not with a broom between the thighs. No. Of course not. Except maybe on Halloween. And even…

But in everyday life, feeling provided with powers that take a dip in the irrational. Being convinced that fate can manipulated like clay longing to be sculpted. Buying books that contain the word “key” and flapping about to the butterfly effect.

Cultivating the occult to gain control of the uncontrollable. Praying before red or white candles on the Sabbath. You know… just in case. Just as in church, but near a tree, at night, muttering “blessed be”, naked, an amulet around the neck.

Throwing fast balls at the Universe. Weaving karma with the wool of good intentions and some sweet grass intertwined. Avoiding ladders and broken mirrors but seeking black cats. Lathering with essential oil and mystery. Slinging a spell at the one who flees a fling. And seeing him mock it or totally freak the fuddle duddle out.

Blaming the full moon for our tides of madness. Putting on airs of synchronicity. Coinciding that there are no coincidences. Yelling “It’s a sign!” at the sight of a bird of ill omen. Turning to the stars to dictate our day. Reading crystal balls, Ouija boards, or Tarot cards. Swinging a pendulum to reset the inner clock.

Yes, most women feel they have some kind of gift. Some have guardian angels; others have posters of fairies atop unicorns. They’re often concocting potions, elixirs and household remedies. They’ve been filling their book of shadows since the dawn of time, despite getting burned by the scientists, the skeptics and the heretics. Whether they are a crazy old warted shrew or a teenager in search of a Twilight hero, they all have one rallying cry: Yes Wiccan!!

They like to believe in the unseen, to use positive or wishful thinking. Lacking physical strength, they turn to psychic forces to calm their angst of the unknown and the seemingly invincible. They focus pocus to be part of their surroundings, to be in communion with the earth and the hereafter.

The superstitious ones do not believe in accidental motivation and fate. They feel compelled to play with destiny by placing it in an external world. Esotericism is the mirror of our fears, our doubts and our history.

Tell me what your rituals and spells are and I’ll tell you what you’re scared of.

It would be a pity that modern civilization made us leave the fields of dreams, spiritualism, intuitive thoughts and interiority in favor of superficial and material contingencies.

Embracing our inner Sybil, guessing the zigs and zags and twists of life at the bottom of a cup of tea, listening to our intuition to decide what to expect (or wear) on coming events. All techniques for a girl to get self-confidant.

In short, taking all aspects of a woman that the dominant culture sees as signs of weakness, such as instinct, menstrual cycles, emotional sensitivity, and use them as tools to understand, communicate with the inexplicable…

… and discover that it works…

Exit with the nasal laugh of Margaret Hamilton in The Wizard of Oz.

To write. The grotesque and the sublime.

Why do you write?

For the pleasure of it, to heal your soul, to make people laugh or think or cry, to live and make a living. You write because that’s all you really know. And still, you doubt. You doubt yourself. Often. In fact, all the time.

But you write anyway. You wear your heart on your paper sleeve, pour it in a journal, share it on the Net, draw it on a Post-it or the back of your hand. Sometimes, your writing is on the wall or directly on the table.

You make lists. And you forget your lists. You ski your Mont Blanc in notepads scarcely ever read again. You document the fleeting to make it eternal. You don’t want to die without leaving some sort of trace of your stay, without giving a few hammer blows in that marble bloc that is life, both tough and tender at the same time. Just as you are. Just as you are.

You take love songs to the edge of a flirt and when you do the rhyme, you do the crime. You have an ease with images and you are a tease with the Word. You can scribble a joke as if you balloon an animal. You become apostolic with the epistle, fold calligraphic origamis. You give, like a crazy wench on the side of the information highway, the secret fruits collected from your garden.

You apply yourself to transcribe your flawless Sanskrit written in trance. But there’s always a few slipups and typos that soil your sheets. You strike while the irony is hot. You blog to the beat of your bosom. And you wash your dirty linen in Times New Roman.

You write for the music it makes. You spread your laps in front of your laptop, Tori Amos style, and you rattle and drum. Your put your open sores on an open score, you tabulate a tablature on your keyboard. And you let the tenants in your attic sing, squatting above the air trap.

You kiss and tell. You knuckle down the aches and pains. You tickle the litotes and tackle the literal. But you’re paralyzed with fear before you write. You are afraid of the monsters under your brain. When you finally swan dive and your inked quill deploys, you’re almost incapable to come at The End. As long as the bottle is not yet thrown to the sea, you erase, you scratch, you switch, you groan, you check and you mate.

You also write to talk. You appreciate the gift of reflection, editing after a night of rough sketch.  You prefer to make a first impression on paper. You’d rather give a card than your stuttering. A text message than a call. A cute note than a hug.

You think you can shape your screams so that they are bearable for others. You can’t always. Generally, you prefer to argue by correspondence than by word of mouth. In short, you surpass yourself in breakup letters.

You write to reread and reexamine your stuff. You sway between thinking you are bright and dumb and grotesque and sublime. You work by the sweat of your blues. You lose foot at the sight of outstretched hands for your scripts. You stagger when you get a compliment and you collapse in front of criticism.

But you get back up. You know how to hit the shift key, because you write for others. You write to be read. You want to create some kind of fondness towards your person. As much as your bottomless ticker can take. You need to feel them caress your text with their eyes. You write to seduce and can’t suffer disinterest.

You write because you can sense some kind of yearning. They are there. Waiting for you, curled in their solitude, over a coffee, between two metro stations, on the throne or some cushions, as they awaken or before slipping into sleep. They are few, maybe, but they are yours.

You write so that they return here. Invisible but palpable, drinking at your fountain pen.

You write because, without them, you’d be nothing. Just a mute yelling under water before drowning in silence…

So you write.

The End