Fear and Cashews
Week of November 9th to November 15th, 2021.
Fear is your guiding light, Virgo. Your inspiration. Your scary little muse. Please don’t misunderstand me here, I do not mean that you are some kind of hot shot adrenaline junkie, bungee jumping your way into artistic acclaim. No, no. Conquering your fears is of no interest to you. Your relationship to fear is less about being in charge of it, and more so allowing it to control you in any way it wants.
This isn’t to say that fear isn’t an effective method of incentivization, it is, it’s more so that I think you could benefit from doing things because you want to, instead of not doing things because your ex-boyfriend’s Mom’s friend heard of someone who died doing that.
Your fear of cats has made you choose certain delis over others. Your fear of silence is why you never stop talking. Your fear of accidentally eating a small, imperceptible-to-the-eye, piece of steel wool (that subsequently gets lodged in your throat and kills you) is what motivates you to responsibly store your precious steel wool far away from your food.
This week, daylight saving’s time allows for plenty of extra fear (on top of your typical heaping portion). To harness the impending feelings of doom that come from the sun going down at 4:30, you start in on some of your Little Projects. You begin with a deep clean of your apartment. You polish your spice containers, you dust every leaf of your houseplants, you try (and fail) to dismantle your rat king of cords.
Unable to organically compel yourself to anything for any reason other than fear, your cleanliness is birthed from your fear of household vermin. When you begin to clean under your very low to the ground bed, you unearth a shocking artifact. A little cashew. Weathered and worn, but still indisputably an entire cashew. This cashew is whole, it is clearly from a package all its own—no “omega 3” trail mixes, since those cashews are usually broken and bruised, shadows of their former selves. No, no, aside from some cosmetic blows, this cashew was largely unscathed.
By accidentally keeping this relatively pristine cashew six inches below where you slept every night, you will have inadvertently proven one of your fears incorrect. That if there is any food in your apartment outside of an airtight container, vermin will descend upon your home instantly, taking over your household, perverting it beyond repair.
It was truly your belief that if you left a cracker on your dining room table overnight, a rat family would set up shop in your apartment, forcing you to find another apartment in a city that is notoriously hard to find an apartment in (the realtor that helped you find your current apartment dated someone with your same last name, which you know because she told you a 37 minute monologue about their tumultuous relationship, seeming to believe there was a chance you might be related to this man, even though your last name is Mitchell, a very common last name, particularly among insensitive men like the one in her soliloquy. That’s not why finding an apartment in New York is hard, but it’s also not not why finding an apartment in New York is hard).
Anyway. Disproving something you thought was absolute fact (the second food hits the floor I must pack my most treasured belongings in a rucksack and head for the hills, because this is the rats’ house now) makes you wonder: What of your other central life tenets are you fundamentally incorrect about? You begin to interrogate truths you hold so close you have no memory of ever questioning them previously.
Is it...impossible for a stylish robe with long sleeves to catch fire while you are cooking?
Are “natural flavors” actually natural and healthy and you can start buying that “tonic” you like again?
Is it actually...safe to drive with soup cans loose in the backseat of a car? It...isn’t possible for them to roll underneath the driver’s seat, get wedged beneath the brake, leading to an instant car crash/your ultimate demise?
I’m thrilled to hear you question your fear doctrines, Virgo, I really am. Though I do hesitate to encourage you too much, for you are easily emboldened and it is not difficult to imagine you ferociously pivoting to an enthusiastic life of preventable danger upon receiving too much cosmic validation.
If possible, it would be nice if this cashew could simply inspire a slight recalibration. Some of your fears are helpful! Your lifelong fear of most men, for example, has largely served you well thus far. But other fears, perhaps, would do well to have some perspective incorporated. You have many made up superstitions (crossing your legs in the car will result in an accident which will result in far worse injuries due to the contortion of your body upon impact) that could use some recalibrating. Perhaps you can start there!
The Skies Insist:
That you listen to The Cell Block Tango from the musical Chicago.
When this movie came out you were not quite old enough to celebrate a soundtrack full of so many fun songs about M U R D E R. You would hide whenever this song came on, which was somehow very, very often? You’re less scared of it now, but have not fully recovered.