The Devil

“The Devil demands honesty in all self-assessment and requires a confrontation and acceptance of one’s raw desires. He forces admission of addiction, impulse, and manipulation. He is a signifier of entrapment, lack of fulfillment, reliance on the material rather than the spiritual. To move past him, one must go deep, face faults, and find forgiveness. He welcomes indulgence, gluttony, and temptation. And yet, the Devil can be embraced as well. He offers fertile soil for creativity, igniting passion, fueling the glowing pyre of ideas and imagination. In the dark spaces, there emerges the poetry of shadows. We place the chains around our own neck. To be freed of the Devil’s shackles, we must remove our own masks and face our own demons.”
- Jessica Hundley, The Library of Esoterica TAROT

THE PLAYLIST

On the morning of December 22, 2020, I received an email at 6:30am from my assistant, Karolyn. “Morning!” she announced, “Based on the new province shut down, which is right now December 26th to January 22 we are only allowed ten performers on set, background included.” We were on our winter hiatus, set to return to Toronto in January to begin shooting episode 102 of Y: The Last Man, an episode that included a scene at the exterior of the Pentagon, besieged by thousands of grieving people, as well as a dramatic storming of the White House so violent that Diane Lane’s character, Jennifer, gives a speech to her cabinet telling them they have no choice but to give up the White House. “It’s just a house,” Jennifer says, “We’ll rebuild.” 

In September, we had entered the country with our nanny, Kinga, a Polish citizen but permanent resident of the US, and literally the only reason our family can function in any way. She was detained at the Canadian border, treated like shit by a woman in a tight blond topknot who asked her “Do you even speak English?” forced to give up her passport and sleep on the floor of the airport in the middle of a pandemic, told not to “try anything” as if spending the winter in Toronto was her idea. It was horrific, dehumanizing and terrible, and though Kinga was able to come eventually and is the only reason Y even got made, we had all decided to leave Canada for Christmas, so we were planning to re-cross that same border in early 2021. 

And so, at 8:30 am on December 22, 2020, I opened my computer and did the only rational thing I could think of. I bought a twenty-six inch wooden party platter off the internet, sold by an Instagram celebrity. Her handle was @TheReluctantEntertainer, and my friend, Vanessa, had turned me onto her.

Sandy Coughlin, The Reluctant Entertainer, looks like she could be a tertiary character on the Real Housewives of New Jersey, and her entire brand is putting together elaborate food spreads on enormous wooden boards that she also sells. This is not your mother’s party platter. We’re not talking about delicate cheese boards with fig paste and marcona almonds. We are talking Taco Boards, Sunday Brunch Boards, and Frito Pie boards for Super Bowl Sunday. An unholy alliance between wood and food.

On the day I found out about the new filming restrictions, The Reluctant Entertainer posted a photograph of herself with a party board so overloaded with clam chowder to serve ten to twelve that she needed to balance it on the countertop. Attractively placed oyster crackers, shrimp, butter and parsley circled an enormous vat of chowder ringed by slices of bread. I knew somewhere deep in the pit of my stomach that “The Big Board” was something I needed to have.

One hundred and fifty nine dollars of wooden glory, the Big Board is a “26-inch round board perfect for larger get-togethers with family and friends,” as described by the website. It could not be shipped internationally, and because it was enormous, it also could not be returned unless it was damaged in shipping. I wouldn’t be in the United States until the end of July of 2021. So because this was a necessary purchase and a goddamned emergency, I had it shipped to my home in Los Angeles where my baffled brother and sister-in-law were living in our house while we were away. 

I wasn’t done. Some large get-togethers require a circular wooden party platter, but there are other soirees, as I’m sure you know, that could use the pleasing geometry of “The Rectangular Big Board.” This baby clocked in at “a glorious 36 inches” and was also non-refundable. No enormous party platter is complete without teak spoons and teak spreaders (I purchased 2 sets of each), as well as a set of tastefully small tongs. They arrived in early January to the doorstep of my bewildered house sitters who placed them out of sight.

On January 6, 2021, we returned to Toronto by car, assured by the Disney immigration lawyer that there would be no problem with Kinga crossing into Canada (though he’d said the same thing in September). We drove for eight hours. As we neared northern New York State, I started getting push notifications on my phone. Trump’s sore loser rally was turning into a situation. Someone was shot, I whispered to Zack, they stormed the building, they built a gallows outside… AOC, llhan Omar, Rashida Talib, and Nancy Pelosi are all still inside. Trump is egging people on. 

Are Congresswomen going to die? I wondered quietly to Zack who white-knuckled the steering wheel. We drove through upstate New York Trump country, a place with Trump posters and bumper stickers, and a handful of Confederate flags. Confederate flags are only ever meant to evoke one thing in any context, but the message is even crystal clear-er when you see one a half hour from the Canadian border.

Suddenly, every truck we passed felt threatening. We averted our gaze, eyes forward on the road. Plus, the closer we got to the border, the quieter Kinga got. She was terrified. Of course she was. We all were. And we were exhausted from an eight hour drive with a two and six year old, all the while whispering updates from our phones to one another about the nightmare unfolding in real time in Washington DC.

Luckily, we got through the border without a problem. The customs officer was a nice guy who also had an iPhone and so he knew that the US was crumbling in our rearview. He practically pushed us over the border.

We got back to our Toronto house, opened a bottle of vodka (fuck dry January), and began a strict fourteen day quarantine. I also opened my phone and bought another set of six wooden spreaders for the party board. I knew I’d need more. Of course I would. I would be having a large gathering at some point in the future, and two sets of four spreaders were not going to cut it.

My need for party accessories did not let up.

From time to time, my brother would call me, “How many of these things do you need?” In the first half of 2021 alone I bought and had sent to a home I wouldn’t return to until July: a portable wooden picnic table, the “Selby Terrazzo Bamboo Melamine Chip and Dip platter” from Anthropologie, the glass Bonita Beverage Dispenser, another long wooden board with tiny legs, a small circular wooden party board, a large, thick, rectangular, wooden party platter, not even remotely similar to the Rectangular Big Board (really a completely new kind of wooden party platter altogether), and an extremely heavy glass and marble domed cheese cloche.

“JUST PUT THEM IN THE HOUSE!” I would tell my brother, who didn’t get it.

One day in the future, my friends and I would gather. We would eat cheese (or, fuck it, tacos) off large wooden boards, and we would return to each other. We’d sit on blankets maybe (I bought some of those too, blankets to put on the lawn where we’d sit and eat things off platters). Life would go on, wouldn’t it? We’d gather, wouldn’t we? My pointer finger asked those nervous questions every time it added something to the cart, every time it landed heavily on “PURCHASE.” 

I was lucky, I know. Very lucky to be working through Covid, and not just working, but making something I loved. It was good that I was working, because I had to support my insatiable appetite for wooden party accoutrement.

Was it hope that had me preparing for a future party where many hands would grab clam chowder off of one big wooden platter? Some glimmer of optimism? Did I know deep down that one day we’d be able to be together again? Or was it denial? Fear that those days were gone, never to return. Maybe it was malignant capitalism wheedling it’s way into my consumerist lizard brain, preying on my anxiety by whispering of a future with casual yard picnics? Perhaps it was the same impulse that led me to drink three to six alcoholic drinks every single night before I’d have to get up to go to set at 5:30 in the morning. The insatiable need to fill the part of my heart that was terrorized and terrified. The deep and aching need inside of me that needed to be filled. 

In Advanced Tarot: An In-Depth Guide to Practical and Intuitive Tarot Reading, Paul Fenton-Smith writes that The Devil card, “represents being seduced by the material world…. While passionately pursuing worldly possessions, people can lose sight of spiritual direction… Each new object acquired brings a fleeting period of excitement that rapidly passes as the gadget loses its novelty. By pursuing ownership of more and more chattels, a person’s time becomes taken up with procuring objects and then with maintaining them, rather than living an abundant life.”

The Devil whispers to us in moments of doubt and uncertainty, promising that one more purchase, one more drink, one more more more will cure us of the roiling churn in our stomach. The Devil promises pleasure at the cost of presence and sanity. The Devil wants cheese boards when the body wants rest and the soul wants connection. The Devil promises you’ll sleep better with an expensive throw pillow shaped like an owl.

The Devil doesn’t care if there’s space for the chip bowl or the new set of champagne flutes. The Devil doesn’t care that you almost never wear makeup and that your skincare routine consists of forgetting to wash your face at least three nights a week. The Devil knows that you dream of a future where you have a twenty-nine step skincare regimen, and The Devil offers you the creams and serums that won’t just moisturize and hydrate but will literally turn back the cruel hands of time.

The Devil promises that bangs will give you a whole new life. The Devil is the reason why you should never go to a hairdresser who won’t tell you the truth in a crisis. My hairdresser, friend, and literal goddess, Meredith Morris, talks about the years between 1999-2001 when women all over the world would roll up to a hair salon with a picture of Meg Ryan and ask for “The Meg.” As Meredith tells it, “Meg Ryan is the most adorable person who ever lived and it’s perfect on her, but it is not perfect for Judy who works at the bank.” A hairdresser in league with The Devil will give you The Meg and send you on your way, knowing in their heart of hearts that three days from now when you wash your hair you’re going to be so fucking sad that it looks like a rat gnawed off chunks of your locks. During that cursed time, one of Meredith’s hair stylist friends would make every woman who came in asking for that haircut to put their thumb over Meg Ryan’s face, “Do you want this hair? Or do you want to look like Meg Ryan? Because I can give you the Meg Ryan, but you’re gonna leave here Meg Cryin’” 

The simplicity and ease of online shopping is the siren song of the modern world. Beautiful music luring you to dash the boat of your dignity on the rocks. Now, I don’t have to drive, put gas in the car, park. I don’t need to go into a store and interact with a single human. I don’t have to ask for a larger size or try something on and realize that I do not look the same as the woman I’ve been sold in the advertisement. No! With just one click of a button I can have the fleeting sensation that maybe this time every single thing I’m worried about, every single flaw I can’t help but see, every single worry gnawing at my heart will vanish the moment my new life arrives on my doorstep in a cardboard box.

Of course there is a guilt and buyer’s remorse. Of course there is a flood of shame when I realize that buying the pair of sandals I’ll probably wear thrice is the same impulse as drinking a bottle of wine in one sitting – better for my liver, but way more expensive. Of course I’m worried about my environmental impact and the world I’m leaving for my children, but that's tomorrow's problem. Everything is so easy. And the moment of relief is so tangible, so fleeting but so powerful.

One day I will die and my children will have to sit together and go through my belongings, sorting through the party platters and the chip bowls and the tiny tongs. I imagine them there in their grief, laughing at their mother who thought if she had enough party platters maybe she’d live forever.

When you pull The Devil in a tarot reading, you are being invited to ask yourself where you might be prioritizing comfort over growth. Sometimes the pursuit of instant pleasure is exactly what you need.  The Devil can bring passion, creativity, lust.  The body seeks pleasure, and I’m not here to tell you to abstain from treats and orgasms. YOU NEED TREATS AND ORGASMS!

But The Devil is also a warning. No matter how many things we build up all around ourselves, we cannot stave off the inevitable. Someone’s going to have to go through your belongings after you die, and that someone will most likely be a person you love. They don’t want your party platters or your holiday-specific earrings or your decorative pillows or the collection of high-end headbands that you bought but never ever wear. They will be grieving the loss of you.

Stuff is a trap, a glittering prison of our own design.

Lately when I’m feeling restless and panicked and desperate to change my state of mind with a quick piece of delusional consumption, I’ll think back to the first horrible break-up of my life. I'll remember the moment when I walked into the home I shared with another person and saw that he had stacked my meager pile of belongings in a corner for me to collect. There it was, everything I owned, which amounted to almost nothing, because he’d always paid for everything. At first I was angry, angry at him for the small pile that made me feel like that’s all he thought of me, angry about all the things we’d bought together that apparently were never really mine.

But then, I remember the feeling that came next… the euphoric sensation of an unencumbered life. The sweet weightless relief of freedom.

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