You know, I do believe in magic. I was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town, among magicians. Oh, most everybody else didn't realise we lived in that web of magic, connected by silver filaments of chance and circumstance. But I knew it all along. When I was twelve years old, the world was my magic lantern, and by its green spirit glow I saw the past, the present and into the future. You probably did too; you just don't recall it. See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to ac tour age. Told to grow up for God's sake.That used to be me when I was a child. I used to be able to see magic in everything. I used to appreciate the sound of birds singing when I got up. I'd walk over the grass after it had rained and run my hands through the hedge, immersing myself in the coldness that was my environment. I'd smell the earth as rainwater fell on it, look out the window at heavy drops from our sloping roof fall and form puddles on the ground. I kept a bird once. It flew in through the window and broke a wing or whatever - anyway, it couldn't fly out, so I put it in a box and fed it for three days. It died.
And then high school came. And I went to the one school that prides itself on turning boys into men. And they did a number on me. So now I have to every day find new ways to act my age. It used to be that I could sit and wait to be told things. Now I have to take initiative. It used to be that my biggest worry was how I would explain the ink stain on my shirt after I was explicitly told not to carry my pen in there. Now I have a new employee whose career is totally in my hands to be concerned about. It used to be that whenever I went over to one of my friends' house, we'd just sit and play games. Or talk. Now, it's couple things and weddings and game nights and baby christenings. It used to be that when I read a comic (and I read a lot) and there was a new super hero in there, I would in the real world try to emulate their power. I made goggles like Cyclops once, but obviously the laser beam didn't quite work out. Now when I'm watching the movies based on those comics I enjoy them, but I know it's because of the comic relief that allows me to escape from reality, if only for two hours.
When life happened I did what everyone else does. I went to school, and then I went to uni, and then I got a job, and then I got my own house. I remember when I was a kid wondering why the hell my parents came home and said they were tired. I mean all they did was sit at a desk all day long. From where I sat, at least we played games, and practised agriculture by practising it, and learned woodwork by making things out of wood. Plus we were little. Now I have days when I come back home, close my eyes, and wake up a day and a half later. Growing up is tough, because now you're going through everything you thought was ridiculous when you saw the adults in your time go through it. And because you seemingly can't enjoy christmas anymore.
So now I'm about to the next thing everyone does. I need to settle down and start a family. All these cousins making my aunts grand parents every other day aren't helping matters at all. It's like the new rat race now - who has the next generation happening. For the days when my plans included things like recording TRL on MTV.
The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. Life itself does its best to take the memory of that magic away from us. And after you go so far away from it, you can't ever really get it back. You can have seconds of it. When a song stirs a memory, when motes of dust turning in a shaft of light takes our attention from the world, when you listen to a bus passing at night in the distance and wonder where it might be going, you step beyond who are and where you are. For the briefest of instants, you have stepped into the magic realm.The memories of who I was and where I lived are important to me. They make up a large part of who I'm going to be when my journey winds down. Maybe later when I have my own children, I'll try a little to make sure they hold on to that magic longer than I did. Maybe they'll be able to use that green lantern to work up an amazing future for themselves.
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