Dear Uma:
Jason called you a pessimist? You? Our very own Rebecca of Sunnybrooke Farm? That would make me laugh if I didn’t know you were stinging a bit from the accusation.
Come on, woman! You know better than to let something like that make your world go all to pieces. Jason is happy and he wants everyone to be happy with and for him and that is not an unreasonable expectation from him right now.
To be attempting to talk to him about the difficulties he may encounter is bad enough in these early days, my friend, but to go on to talk about how hard it may be for his and Sarah’s children?—going too far, way too far.
And come to think of it, sometimes you have displayed a ‘glass is half empty’ outlook.
Every time I type a ‘u’ in words like colour, favour, or honour, I remember how certain you were (and how often you told me) not to move to Canada. My new husband was Canadian, and you liked him, but your rationale was he’d lived more years out of the country of his birth than he had lived in it, so what did he know?
I would be miserable and my intellect would wither in this bleak and barren country, surrounded by brutish people; you told me my new marriage would not survive Canada.
I happened to know you think every place that is not southern California fits the above description so while I appreciated your belief in my intellect as a valuable, though apparently fragile, quality to be treasured but I could have done without the voice of doom; I was quite worried enough about getting married and going to live in the Far North.
These days it seems being called ‘negative’ is equivalent to being an abuser of animals, a parent who disciplines their children or a person who votes Republican.
In the interest of being fair to negativity and cheering to you, I am going to, briefly, praise the negative.
It has been necessary to the survival of our species and still serves a valuable function. What has brought me to this lonely precipice of modern thought is imagining the times when looking on the dark side was the safest and best way to go.
A very long time ago, knowing where the sabre-toothed tiger lurked (negative) was far more important than knowing where the prettiest flowers (positive) could be found.
We still pay attention to negative reports of restaurants or films; if someone tells us a company is an awful place to work, we don’t apply. There are many instances when a negative is good to know and saves us time, money and, sometimes, heartbreak. (No, I am not thinking of Jason and his fiancee.)
Then, for something completely different, there are the accidental negatives. Did you hear about Claudia’s misadventure in the world of wicca?
Determined to fulfil a longtime dream of becoming a witch, Claudia has been earnestly pursuing her studies. She is living in Victoria, BC, which is reputed to be the home of more wiccans than any other place in Canada.
Claudia learned to build a ‘cone of power’ in one of her spell-casting classes and coincidentally, she learned it on the very day someone really pissed her off.
She went and built the cone in his driveway, muttering incantations as she did so, and thinking very (negative) thoughts.
There was no well-thought-out plan going on here, and there was certainly no deep wish for mayhem to be visited upon his household; she merely wanted to make the man uncomfortable.
The act of building the cone and doing the chanting made her feel ever so much better and her mood was quite cheerful (positive) when she got home.
Imagine her shock and chagrin to learn the man’s cat had been run over by a car less than an hour after she had cast her spell. She was not one whit gladdened by the news, but she did not feel responsible either. Claudia was interested in witchcraft, but had a wide streak of skepticism going on, as well.
The day after the construction, the object of her mislike fell from a ladder while cleaning out the eaves troughs on his roof. He broke his ankle and cracked two ribs in the fall.
Claudia, now concerned and feeling the first fingers of guilt wrap around her heart, realized she had no idea how to rescind the spell—how to undo it (accidental negative). Her teachers, her coven, had all gone to witch camp, an annual event on the mainland, and would not be back for a week.
The spell, it turned out, was finite; it had a timeline of three days. Three long and fraught days for Claudia as she learned of the series of misfortunes being visited upon the hapless object of her (by now extinguished) anger.
His cat was dead, his ankle was broken and he had a fire in his garage.
His bike was stolen on the third day, and was recovered, trashed, that evening.
Claudia called me after the ankle-breaking, thinking my esoteric research may have given me some knowledge of spell-casting and spell undoing.
I was unable to help her, but my interest was tweaked.
Now, much too late to change things for Claudia and the unfortunate object of her accidental negativity, I have come across To Break a Spell You Have Cast.
I have discovered covens who do rituals online and exchange information using the World Wide Web.
There is a long list of spells available; I have taken it upon myself to gather some in order to share the power with you and other carefully chosen friends.
I have already sent Lari two spells: How To Ward Off Vampire Attacks is first. He has expressed a great fear of vampires since reading the teen hit series and then seeing Twilight. Having a rare blood type, he has become convinced he is a target of the toothy ones. I also sent him Protection Against Nightmares. Between those two spells he ought to feel safe and reassured.
I am giving you a choice. You can have Spell to Make Someone See The Error Of Their Ways (to be used on Jason, or yourself); Spell To End A Relationship (either Jason and Sarah’s, or yours and Jason’s); and Spell For Another Way To End A Relationship (this is a surprise spell; I have no idea what the ‘another way’ might be, so be judicious.)
You could use the Spell To Banish Personal Negativity, though I’d be careful of that one; as previously mentioned, a little personal negativity can be a good thing, and ‘banish’ seems too dramatic—it’s up to you.
I myself am attracted to Corn Wealth Spell, mostly for its sheer mystery. Does one become wealthy in corn? Insofar as there seems no other explanation, is it a blessing spell or a curse spell? How much corn represents wealth? Do I want to know badly enough to risk being buried in corn?
As if spells are not enough, there is also a site where one may order ‘charm bags’—not bags of charm, which I would order instantly, but bags of promises.
Luck In Business: a charm bag clearly owned by the people who sell charm bags.
Confidence In Social Situations: the placebo effect alone would make this one worth a try.
Drawing Out A Latent Talent: another grab bag; what if your latent talent is something you consciously do not want to be involved with—like pole dancing? or painting in egg tempera? or horse whispering?
Back to the list of spells. I found one I really, really want, especially today when past the middle of April, it is snowing—The Spell For Warmth.
Love,
Heather
Heather Bennett is a writer
who lives in Watson Lake.