 |
| Sleight of Hand by Rokus Aleliunas aka Casual Polar Bear |
As always, please feel free to read your sign, the signs of your lovers and children and enemies, the sign of the person you most admire, the signs you wish you were, and any other signs you'd like.
Aries: In 2013, normcore erupted. The proposal was simple: release ourselves from the hipster's aesthetic chokehold, reclaim the stonewashed denim and puffy white sneakers of the Seinfeld era, and relax into a deliberately sexless, ambiguously gendered, and defiantly unironic look. However! According to its originators, the artistic collective K-HOLE, they originally meant for the term "normcore" to simply mean wearing outfits that fit the context, regardness of if they fit your own personal style: wear pleather pants at a rave, wear a blazer to the office, wear a cap to the ballgame, because that's the done thing. (What we now refer to as normcore was originally called Acting Basic.) I am FASCINATED by this switch in meaning: is this what critical theory professors mean by the death of the author? In any case, I invite you to think about places where you act basic, where you reject the dominant mood, and whether or not you feel lonely or if you feel free.
Taurus: Every year, my town hosts upwards of a million tourists, most of whom come to see capital-T theatre. It's interesting to live here, because the million of people who come through have fairly specific tastes: they like a quaint downtown, a lovely riverside promenade, and lots of local shops. As a result, certain parts of the town can feel Disney-fied, with upscale women's clothing boutiques and nice cheese shops, but not a lot of places that feel weird. And you know, that's becoming true of a lot of cities! Even big ones like Toronto are shedding their music venues and Weird Malls in order to build condos. Taurus, it's easy to bemoan this, and I think we should: when our places see us solely as consumers, rather than as citizens, it can make the experience of living there rather flat. How would you inject new life into your town, Taurus?
Gemini: There's this idea in therapy that we need to look under the first feeling to get to the real feeling. Because of socialization, a lot of men express anger when they're really sad, and a lot of women do the reverse; we tend to funnel our feelings into expressions that seem safer or more familiar. I've been paying attention to the layers of my feelings, and it turns out that I'm often sad, angry, and afraid all at the same time, and dropping down through them feels like spelunking. I try to figure out what my biggest emotional response is, and run towards that. Anyway, all this to say: what makes you sad, angry, or afraid?
Cancer: A few years ago, I wanted to have a more sustainable wardrobe. I coveted that breezy linen look—the boilersuits, the overalls, the shirtdresses—or the waxed canvas, or the denim twill. But, like, Cancer: do you know how expensive those sustainable fashion companies can be? I cannot, in good conscience, bring myself to pay nearly two hundred dollars for a pair of shorts, or seven hundred dollars for a sweater. I know! I admire those who can, even though, probably, whatever you're doing to be able to afford $200 shorts is not sustainable either, if we're being honest. Why are ethical choices so expensive? What kind of world have we built? And honestly, Cancer, I still want the good shorts.
Leo: I love zines. I love concert posters. I love mix tapes. I love magazines. I love shitty paperback novels. I love maps. I love photographs. I love calendars (my all-time favourite was 2014's Beautiful Sheep). I love cards in the mail. I love love letters. In the digital age, many of these things have been miniaturized and zapped into our phones, and I want some of them back. A friend sent me a DVD in the mail, and scrawled a poem of friendship to accompany it; I framed it. It's almost like a museum artifact, a thing that might have been so common once—a shard of pottery, a loaf of carbonized bread—and now it's rare and precious. Do you miss these things too, Leo? Or are you relieved to not carry around so much? Make me a mixtape and tell me all about it.
Virgo: Everyone is turning 40 right now! From the giant high school-style
house party to the international trip, to the non-acknowledgement to the bona fide
midlife crisis, I love seeing how people are choosing to mark the
occasion. I myself had Covid on my actual 40th birthday last November, so I did a
re-do party six months later and woooweee let me tell you: it's true
what they say about alcohol. I had my first three-day hangover,
an experience so wretched I have not had a drink since. I sort of like
this sober summer, especially as a part of this weird first year of
separated life. Self care doesn't always look like what I think it might, you know? And when will I want a drink again? I don't know. I'm not sure I will.
Libra: I've started framing the things that I know I should do, but haven't been doing, as self harm. These are little harms, not big ones: when I spend fifteen work-avoidant minutes scrolling on my phone, or when I reach for a simple carb for the fifth meal in a row, or when I don't reset before I do my child's bedtime and end up in a furious lather. I know the solutions—put the phone down, eat some green vegetables, take five minutes—and that when I shirk them, I feel much worse. It's easy to say, "oh, that's self-care, that's boring self-care," but somehow, that doesn't motivate me. But when I flip the avoidance of self-care into self-harm, then I know it's serious. I have come through serious self-harm behaviours, and frankly, I'm glad I don't do them anymore. Taking care of myself isn't always glamourous, and sometimes I feel like I have to trick myself, but I can be both smart and dumb at the same time.
Scorpio: God, I love cheese. I'm not a snob about it—I don't need your fancy imports or your farmer's market selections—but please, yes, give me the salty, fatty, creamy goodness. I especially love a good cream cheese and cottage cheese; everyone always goes for the upmarket hard cheddars or mould-laced stinky bois, but I love soft and a little sweet and salty. I don't what this cheesy affection reveals about me, but I suspect that we all have preferences we know are slightly downmarket. Do we stand in our affection, or hide in shame?
Sagittarius: In most astrology, Sags are flighty nomads, but this characterization annoys me because I'm a rare "please let me stay home" Pokemon variant. I haven't travelled extensively since I was a young kid; the travels I did take as an adult are all at least ten years in the rearview. I have never really felt compelled to book the trip to Stockholm, to take the redeye to Porto, to do a roadtrip to the Grand Canyon. Many of my Sag friends are wonderful at travelling, but I would much rather read a good book about a seaside vacation than actually take one. What a snooze! But also, what a dream to grow roots instead of wings. What a privilege.
Capricorn: I'm single now. It's a weird feeling, to be single at 40. My ex-husband has a new girlfriend, and sometimes I roll my eyes about it and sometimes I pity them both, for different reasons. I care about this a little, and I wish I didn't care at all. For the first year of our separation, I could not examine the question of how much of what happened in our marriage was because of me. It was such a painful question, and impossible to answer, truly; it's not like my ex would say, "Actually, I will own 68% of these problems, and that leaves you with 32%, enjoy and good luck." I am culpable for some of it; I want to be accountable, because that will lead to healing and hopefully better relationships in the future. But I couldn't even start asking myself those questions for nearly a year. It's almost time, now. I can start soon.
Aquarius: Love is like bread, as the saying goes. It must be made fresh every day. Sometimes it's a feast, and sometimes only crumbs, but we do eat every day. Tonight, my child and I walked hand-in-hand and ate mango ice cream in the September heat. We were lovely, chatty and funny. Last night, I cried in the dark because I was too overwhelmed by single parenting, by another dinner rejected and uneaten, undone and unhappy. It was too much. And yet: the loaf of our love rose again, a little miracle. I have to trust that we will find our way back to mango ice cream, back to the warm loaf of our love for each other, because the miracle of parenting is that so far, it has happened every day. We rise again.
Pisces: Poor Pisces. You are the last on the zodiac, and the sign I find hardest to spell (and I say this as a Sagittarius). I blow my writerly load on sexy signs like Scorpio and Taurus, and leave you to the end. On the other hand, you youngest children get away with stuff that the Geminis would never even dream of. I associate you with a certain silver sparkle—maybe your fishy scales, or your empathetic nature—and a dreamy quality that belies your steely undergirding. I think we forget the Pisces at our own peril, truly. Not that you would ever be vindictive (I don't think that's in your nature), but that you would simply leave us all in your silvery dust.
