Magic: A Response

Magic. Magic. Magic. Card tricks are magic. A deck of cards can signify potential for magic. Or they can signify gambling. Gambling can be magic. It makes more money appear in your hand than was there before - just - poof! These little chips signifying thousands of dollars appear in your hand from picking a card or spinning a wheel or pulling a lever and then poof! They are gone again. Magic.

Is it getting better? Or does it feel the same? Magic is supposed to make things better in an instant - Cyst on your ovary magically bursts - POOF - and leaves a puddle of cyst fluid floating around your body for weeks so you still are nauseous all of the time and have to lie in bed, but your doctor says it's fine, so it must be fine, even though you find yourself throwing up into a toilet more often than not - but it’s gone, so magic! Does it feel the same? No? New and different sickness? Awesome! MAGIC.

The magic of our blood pumping through our bodies, magic of neurosciences and electricity. Tesla coils and theremins and cells and brains telling our bodies to eat things and dance things and fuck things. Magic of sound waves waving through space. Magic of the vibrations in a room pulsing with the heartbeats of people who stood here before, with love on their minds and murder in their hearts. Magic of stomping our feet on wooden boards that used to be giant trees absorbing water and sounds and now absorbing our feet thumps. Magic of fitting together with someone so perfectly, like a puzzle piece and then waking up one morning to discover they shape shifted in the night and wow, this bulbous protrusion is not going to fit into my life anymore.

The magic of becoming dulled by routine. Of not seeing things you see everyday. They become part of the atmosphere and no longer inspire. They are brown. They are furniture. They are scenery. They are standard, regular, customary, normal, usual, ordinary, typical. They are invisible. These words infiltrate your body, slime, slow jam, the dreary routine causes muscle to turn into bone, locking limbs in place, and is often fatal. A body at rest tends to stay at rest. Inertia is the tendency of an object to remain at rest or

Inertia can be changed by a net external force. Net external force can get your boring, slowing, dying heart back in motion. Acceleration is produced when a force acts on a mass. For instance, a mass being forced into a rental car 6 hours from home due to a miscalculation in time and airline reservations can act and push the object into acceleration. Which creates more magic.

The magic of hurtling through countrysides. In little metal pods with wheels or wings or on tracks and grass and cows and horses and shopping centers and billboards with messages straight from Jesus and God herself and crisscrossing power lines and the sounds of NPR or country songs about horses and beer infiltrate your ears and nestle in your brain folds and you feel your mind calm and also sharpen again and thoughts expand to fill the space between the asphalt and the perfectly overcast sky. That goddamn magic when you can finally hear your own thoughts again uncontaminated by others, even Terry Gross works in concert with you and her thoughtful droning voice give wings to your own and the facebook friends, the co workers, the idiot teenagers on the train, parents, family members you are forced to swallow fall away. And there is no one but you and Terry and that country drawl guy with the horse and beer fall together with the sound of the earth flying below your feet and driving by yourself becomes a miracle.

I hope everyone has the opportunity to - wait - no no no no no - you cannot wait for anyone to give you permission. That’s another magic. Finding a way to circumvent waiting for an outside net force. The magic of YOU looking inside YOU and realizing that your heart isn’t pumping with the same enthusiasm and realizing for yourself that if you don’t break out of your everyday routine, if you don’t scale those walls you’ve created by treading the same path for ten years, strap on your, i don’t know, the shoes with the spikes that people wear when they climb things? Get some ropes! Make your tools and gather your guts because if you don’t, your heart will slow to a stop. And then instead of just feeling dead, you will actually be dead. Thoughts have power and energy and without them, synapses will give up on you and stop firing. What’s the point, they will think? She’s done. Synapses will whisper, “This is so boring, let us die.” And poof.

Your body will be dead. Which is another kind of magic! Our bodies with the sad synapses and cold still hearts and still bodies will be burned or buried or left friendless on the couch for too long, turning first to cat food and then to maggot food and then to sludge (which, is most likely food for some beautiful microorganisms). The magic of our energy leaving us to find sunnier and more exciting pastures, our heartbeat stopped, neurons left synapse-less, but they didn’t just leave. Energy can’t be destroyed, but it can end up looking for another vehicle.

Don't let your energy go looking for another vehicle.

I found magic in a hopeless place.

I found magic after my body betrayed me.

I found magic when my lover shape shifted.

I found magic on the dance floor.

Magic in stomping my feet on wooden floors. In becoming so tired of acting tough.

Magic in finally doing as I pleased.

In hurtling my broken, dull, slowing heart across the brown hills of Tennessee.

Under grey skies, between semi trucks in my small metal box.

Magic in music. Magic in science I wish I paid more attention to in school.

Magic in hopes and do-s.

Magic. Magic.