Sometimes it's hard to see the magic, especially when terrible things in the world are happening. Sometimes it's hard not to see how pointless and bleak and tragic and heartbreaking just existing in the world can be.
I was walking home down Robleda the other day, and I could see the ocean and the mountains and the clouds looked like the ashes of fireworks after they begin to fade from the sky. Sia was in my ear singing in her beautiful, broken wail "I'm still breathing, I'm still breathing, I'm ALIVE."
I could feel the wind against my skin, the percussion beat of my heart in my chest, I could hear and feel as I exhaled out loud. My body was limestone; solid but malleable to the forces around it. It was a moment of supersymmetry connecting me with the world at large, the universe, the elements, the past, the present, the future; It was a portal through which everything had converged and being alive suddenly felt weightless. All this because the wind was blowing in my face and the lyrics of a pop song were just right. It was like Pharrell Williams himself, ever the consummate spirit guide, was telling me to feel the fucking magic of being alive as a person in the world. I almost cried.
One of the things I like to ask people when I meet them is, "What makes you feel alive?" I love hearing how it's answered, especially when the response includes the mundane little things that remind me how to see the magic in the most unexpected places. I like asking it because I think it gives me clues as to how people see the world and what is symbolic to them. Some of my favourite answers have been: warm rain, a smile, fast cars, moss, the sound of the trees, ice cream in the summer, mid-day naps, Thor's biceps (mine).
But it's in these tiny, beautiful, ordinary things that we find the magic.
I think it takes becoming very quiet, and breathing, and then you start to see it. You start to see the magic floating on the breeze, and it opens you to a generosity, a kindness, a grace that feels weightless. You start to see it in the faces of the people you pass, in the hearts of those whose thoughts you're in. When I'm still enough, I see it in the flowers flowing in the wind, in the tranquillity of the trees, in the ever-changing shape and mood of the ocean; I hear it in the rain falling outside my window at night, and in the soft snores of my dog when he sleeps; I feel it in a first kiss, and in the hands of those I love.
Sometimes it's all too much. There's too much pain and horror and injustice spilling over, blotting out any light, erasing any magic, weighing our limbs down, too heavy to even move. And yet a spark remains. We remain.
Despite my mystical, magic conjuring walk, I still arrived home to find my dog demanding to know where I'd been again all day, the underwear I desperately needed hadn't yet arrived in the mail from The Gap, my laundry was still piled on top of the chair that serves no purpose, and 45 minutes before I to had run off to Street Fighter class. Obviously the bulk of my concerns were petty and inconsequential and jesus how could I be whining over this kind of shit when people are being massacred? Suddenly the magic was gone. I thought, "Fuck off Sia I'm hungry let's talk about hanging from the chandelier another time. I'm tired and I probably should have washed my hair this morning."
So I sat down at my table to write this, and there it was. The single pink daisy in the mason jar, facing into the last ray of light that shines through my living room when the sun goes down. There it was in the smallest, most mundane of places; the beauty and heartbreak and tragedy and magic of the world held in the single petal of a wilting flower.
I'm still breathing. I'm still breathing. I'm alive.
