Maverick Life

SATIRICALLY SPEAKING

The bad vibes are trapped in your closet

The bad vibes are trapped in your closet
Gwyneth Paltrow attends the goop lab Special Screening. Photo by Rachel Murray/Getty Images

Cleanse the bad from your wardrobe, find your spirit animal and all will be well in 2021. Namaste.

On 9 December 2020, as fearless leader and saviour of the children, Donald J Trump continued the brave battle to “stop the steal” of the election by the demonrats, cnn.com reported that First Lady (and the Last Lady in my opinion) Melania Trump “just wants go home”, to Mar-a-Lago. The article goes on to mention that her parents have a suite of rooms there as well, and that “Melania Trump views Mar-a-Lago as a peaceful respite of sun, solitude and self-care”.

While I would have preferred to read that she would be standing by the fearless leader through thick and Biden, I get it. Being something of a kindred spirit, Melania’s inner journey is often uncannily aligned to my own. I too want to go home these holidays, and be surrounded by family, but thanks to the viral grinch that stole 2020, I have to stay put, and keep my distance from the loved ones I desperately want to see.

Like Mel, I’m in need of “self-care”. Alas, with no Mar-a-Lago to go to, and faced with a Christmas season like no other, sans the familiar warmth and security of family, I look to my usual spiritual guides to point me towards attainable sources of respite. Those who know me well know that I worship at the church of Goop.com, the spiritual oasis that my benevolent guru-from-a-distance, Gwyneth Paltrow, built for those of us in search of spiritual guidance. And she never disappoints.

While on the website in search of spiritual edification today, I came across a most enlightening and potentially life-changing interview with “energy stylist” and “shamanic healer” Colleen McCann. Dear reader, do yourself a favour and visit her website, styleritual.com. Your mind will be blown, your chakras will be aligned, you will live, you will learn.

I am currently saving up to book one of her one-on-one intro sessions, which she provides for an “exchange” of $400 (R6,000). Thanks to all things remote and virtual I can connect to “bi-coastal (NY and LA)” McCann from the comfort of my desk right here in Africa. As she states on her website: “Don’t worry if you can’t make it because energy travels wherever there is a strong Wi-Fi connection.” Thankfully, I have fibre. The energy will flow, and so will 6,000 of my rands in “exchange”. #Blessed.

According to McCann’s website, the energy stylist “was working in fashion and realised that statement necklaces had superpowers, colours worn influenced a person’s energy and that my intuition could be used to heal myself and others.”

I need this so much.

Like many of us, I have spent my working days in 2020 in close proximity to my refrigerator, and hence I have experienced a significant degree of horizontal growth, and not nearly as much spiritual growth as I had hoped for. And being a glass-half-full-bright side-of-life thinker, when I look at all this new additional body gifted to me by 2020, I see an opportunity to work on a new wardrobe, and thanks to the likes of McCann, I now know it can be a spiritually awakened wardrobe.

For a teeny exchange of $99, McCann does a Closet Cleanse, as reported by Vogue.com back in 2016, when she visited their Fashion News Director, Chioma Nnadi’s closet. Back then, Nnadi reported: “McCann has consulted with my spirit guides and they have decided that pale pink should be my power colour, the one shade most likely to bring success, joy, and happiness in all areas of my life.”

How accurate of the spirit guides, especially as pale pink, also known as rose quartz back then, was a key colour in both fashion and interiors.

Amazing!

Namaste Nnadi.

Looking at the variety of colours in her closet, McCann advised: “The spirits are telling me you have too many different personalities in here. You need to streamline all of this, otherwise you’ll continue to suffer from fashion schizophrenia every morning.”

Oh God no! Not fashion schizophrenia. It’s the absolute pits!

Their session continued: “She then proceeds to move her hands over my clothes like a metal detector, and I watch as the magic happens. ‘My hands are burning!’ she shrieks, hovering over a recently acquired lurex J.W. Anderson cardigan. ‘This shirt isn’t serving you,’ she says.”

I really hope she can do a remote closet cleanse for me, I feel like there’s a lot that is not serving me in my closet right now.

However, schizophrenic closets aside, what initially drew me to the Goop interview with McCann was its subject matter, spirit animals, which I must admit I had misunderstood to be a term that could be applied to both animals and humans. Up until this day, I often thought of both Melania and Gwyneth as my spirit animals.

Thankfully Goop and McCann enlightened me: “A spirit animal is characterised as a teacher or messenger that comes in the form of an animal and has a personal relationship to an individual… It is believed that you do not choose the animal, rather it chooses, or has already chosen you. The animal is there to provide ‘medicine’ to the recipient in the form of guidance, lessons, protection, power or wisdom… You can have one or several spirit animals throughout your lifetime. They can come in and out of our lives to give us guidance, teach us about ourselves and help us maintain balance. The timing and direction we are headed on our path, a specific occasion that may arise, phases of life, or tasks that need to be completed along our journey will dictate what animal steps forward to help.”

How might you know what your spirit animal is, you ask? Goop and McCann have the answer: “Quite simply, ask the animal to show itself to you.” I did, and immediately a vision of a horse came to mind. How positively Putin-esque!

I knew it! I must say, I’ve always felt a certain spiritual resonance with horses. As a child, Horses on the Carmargue was my favourite poem. In Lord of the Rings, I loved Gandalf’s horse Shadowfax so much I named my cat after it. True story. For years while living in Cape Town, I would attend the L’Ormarins races at the beginning of January, the former J&B Met races at the end of January, and I would finish off the equestrian season with the Veuve Clicquot polo in March. And of course I still remember the first time I saw topless Putin on a horse. Also, I was born in 1978, which according to the Chinese zodiac is the year of the… yep, you guessed it.

Thank you, McCann, the light in me sees the light in you.

Ever the practical team who thinks of absolutely everything, Gwyneth and co attached some handy links in the body of the article for spirit animal jewellery that you can shop. Naturally I am especially drawn to the gold “Spirit Animal Ring” with a horse engraved on the top, and an inscription inside that reads: “O sweet adventure keep my heart wild.” I feel a very transformative vibe from this ring. You can’t put a price on that resonance, but for the sake of practicality Goop has made these available to shop right on the website for a mere “$2,800 (R42,000).” I can feel my chakras aligning already.

Screenshot from goop.com

Screenshot from goop.com

To be clear, Gwyn goes beyond the spiritual and provides the most practical things for us goops. So, for my friends out there who might be wondering what gift to get me to celebrate our priceless connection and the many ways I have been a good friend to you even in moments when you were less than deserving, look no further than the “Tsuchiya Kaban Watermelon Bag”.

The Watermelon Bag. Screenshot from tsuchiya-kaban.jp

Not only is it a thing of beauty, handcrafted in leather by one of Japan’s best, but it brings us to a new understanding of practicality. Think of it: How many times have you struggled to find just the right bag to carry a watermelon in. Stress no more. Goop and Kaban have your back, a bag shaped and crafted specifically to fit and carry one whole, juicy watermelon. It’s been a tough year for all of us, so many have lost so much, so much hunger, so much need. It’s all got me so stressed. Like, bad vibes. I need to heal, I need respite, I need this bag. It’s priceless! Literally. As per the goop website: “Price upon request.” DM/ML

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