In Twelfth Night, a character named Sebastian warns Antonio that “the malignancy of my fate might perhaps distemper yours” (2.1.4–5).
The big, important books you are forced to read always have something to offer, but it’s been months since you’ve had space on your nightstand, or in your mind. Strangely, that is starting to worry you. You’ve left your keys behind the door twice, your brand-new stockings are already torn, and they still haven’t called. You gather everything you know, all the articles you’ve read and all the years of study, and it leads you to believe—without a shadow of a doubt, and with peer reviews to back it up—that someone must have jinxed you.
After careful consideration (because you would never do such a thing if it weren’t for the sheer curse that has settled upon you), you go to your favourite tarot reader. You order a glass of dry red and allow her witchiness to soothe your deepest, most childish anxieties and guide your future. Her tarnished rings tap the cards; her long hair always escapes the flame of her lit cigarette; the scent of vanilla incense lingers in the background, masking the smell of a very conscious city (she is, of course, the real deal). There you sit, a specimen to be examined for signs of illness and infection.
“Your lips look pale and dry, that is the body falling ill for its future.”
“The way you tilt your head! Your dull brain and deficient humours have been further weakened by an excess of roast beef.”
“I knew it—someone has jinxed me!”
“Indeed. It is right there, in black and white.”
Now, with the confirmation that your fate is indeed burdened, you and your contagious breath drag yourselves home in torn stockings. Your keys have, naturally, escaped you, so you linger outside your familiar, worn-out door and wait. As you wait, in this strange space in between, the marks on your door do not begin to resemble moving violas, or dancing carnations, or even sand-made paths you could lose yourself in. The marks on your door look like marks—and that is why you are jinxed.
No vanilla incense could ever help with that. You have jinxed yourself; your disease is self-inflicted. Then again, like all of us, you are young, very young.
And if some witchy spell is what you prefer, then let me recite some Toni Morrison. Through the only thing we have—language—let me disprove your fears:
“I trust you with the bird that is not in your hands because you have truly got it.”
Source: The Arden Shakespeare- Twelfth Night
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