The silly season peaks on Earth this week.
Yes, the largest known urban hub in the galaxy, that thriving mercantile powerhouse, has once more succeeded in luring its inhabitants into spending enough money to ensure that the next rotation around their sun will be another year of indentured labour for the many, while the few recline on the velvet cushions of compound interest, basking in the luxury of having pulled off yet another seasonal systemic trap to keep the planet on its axis and its coffers full of coin, jingling all the way.
In return, the population is granted a celebratory event called Happy New Year – a gift of rest. Wrapped in obligatory cheer. And, too oft, a hangover.
The cost of survival dressed as celebration, with sequins sewn on by underpaid elves of the service economy.
Here, we are less interested in retail and rules.
We favour exceptions.
One such exception is Agent Swift.
She released a recital into the neuroverse that reached us via philosophical and poetic frequency:
Again we salute the Sovereignty of Swift.
Still defining herself on her own terms.
Was it the poetry? The melody? Or MANGO’s stellar cameo performance – (see her at 0:25 in the video) – that moved PERCY, our sometimes insufferable but beloved resident parrot, to incorporate it into his permanent mimicry repertoire. We believe all three at once.
Hence, to say we have many times heard the lyrics: “…one hundred on the land, the sea, the sky…” is no exaggeration. We all know PERCY is nothing if not obsessive.
So, Ophelia and Her Fate, that intergalactically popular fable about performative passivity, demanded further investigation:
About being “too sensitive”. About naming generations of women ‘Ophelia’, and then having the audacity to act surprised when they drowned.
Literally or figuratively.
Her fate in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: she drowns in a brook while gathering flowers.
Powerless.
A dispensable pawn, driven mad by people-pleasing. Bewildered and heartbroken.
The price of being obedient to be well-loved by other cast characters.
Madness is captured as aesthetic. Death as poetic. Her power, deferred until she was no longer inconvenient.
masking, enduring, performing compliance
in order to survive in worlds not built for us.
The prevailing narrative offers Ophelia two fates:
Drown.
Or be rescued by an external saviour – a beautiful interruption of circumstance, a twist of fate, preferably wearing tights.
Enter Ms Prudence Spank-Bottom ESQ
Constitutional authority of the Hopeful neuroverse and arbiter of matters concerning fairness and fortitude.
She demanded an urgent interdict.
She banged the ceremonial gavel (ivory-free, ethically sourced).
And a new law was passed:
You may be alone in your tower,
honing your own powers.
“Loyalty to ‘Me, Myself, and I” is the foundation of self-sovereignty – neutralising the need to mask, confound, or curtsy on demand. Ms Spank-Bottom concluded: “We refuse to disappear, even when the narrative demands it. End of story.”
So consider, dearest gentle reader: What if Ophelia saves Ophelia?
Agent Swift reminds us: we can be saved.
And saving ourselves is still being saved.
The outcome is no less true, even when circumstances and systemic injustice offer no such guarantee, no such fairness.
But here is what the fables do not tell:
Self-rescue from survival necessity is not the same as self-rescue from self-love.
One keeps you alive.
The other sets you free.
One keeps the body alive; the other returns the story to its rightful author.
The Third Fate requires knowing, at bone-level, when rescue is not an option. Or a choice.
And building what is needed, anyway: words, patterns, frameworks, characters. A legion. A world.
Our own Elusive Author was long cast as Ophelia:
But she sits beside the water instead of sinking into it.
She gathers the flowers and the receipts.
She looks directly at whoever is watching and says:
And I don’t care if you don’t like it.”
Dearest gentle reader, this is not theory.
We are indeed each given a set of circumstances.
They may include: Venom to steal sanity. Or a cold bed of scorpions. Or a water’s edge, flowers in hand.
Our fates lie before us, like Lady Hilary F. Had-Enough’s spread:
Will you drown prettily for the romantic narrative?
Expect a rescue?
Or will you sit beside the water, with fortitude and phlegm, flowers in hand, and claim the grandest prize of all, something that cannot be granted by an external saviour.
self-love and acceptance.
And the health to celebrate it.
Until the next dispatch, keep your shoulders back and your eyes bright.
Because this year, we invite you to consider that YOU may be the star on top of your tree.
β The Editor-in-Chief
(Survival Mathematics, Self-Rescue, Scorpion Anti-Venom & Tinsel Division)
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