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III. Science vs. Magic

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Listen to the Science vs. Magic playlist in Spotify

 Have you ever craved something and wished it would appear?

I wonder if you’ll walk in the door. I glance up without realizing the motion has been frequent.

If you appeared it wouldn’t be unexpected. Although I don’t believe in magic enough to think this would actually occur.

I make it sound like I’m sitting here waiting, which I’m not – I mean, it’s not why I came here.

I just like to write about this.

I set my IM status to “manifest” for just short of a year. (Since then I’ve learned that)
It’s hard to manifest things through technology.

Now I meditate on things like purpose, identity, and finding fire.

My home is my base, my enabler. There’s no fire there – just a warmly lit simmer, comfortable and close in the way only time can build.

Are you thinking about me too?

And if you did happen to walk through the door, what would I say? What would we do? Would someone say something meaningful? Would I be awkward, as usual?

I find myself rendered uncomfortable by extended silences with an incapacity to withdraw guard for the sake of anything great. I’d bring up topics that swing mundane or oddball to fill the silence of what would be ideal to say instead.

I’d rather not fuss with all this.

It’s easy to deduct why.

More likely is that I crave something else – opportunity walking through the door, in the form of you.

Opportunity is safe to think about in its deliciously intangible and futuristic forms.

It is both grandiose and delicate, requiring adequate demonstration of both practical science and providential magic.

Larger than life seem our ideas and feelings surrounding them. The yearning to create, the desire for purpose, and of course — the crave.

At some point over time, these feelings gradate to something casual. They boil into candy-coated ambition with escapist tendencies, resulting in idealistic fiction based on what we’ve been taught to embody.

Leisurely Sunday mornings in bed and a way to find your way home at the end of the day. A place for logistics, a hot meal in the form of a bear hug and comfortable pajamas.

The essential day-to-day. Walking together through the seasons of life.

What about the riskier stuff – the feeling that makes you want to flee to the airport, jump out of your skin, yell at the top of your lungs, run for five miles straight? When we know, we just know, we’re timeless and momentary and life is larger than this it just has to be.

Difficult is the visualization of our dreams, however obtuse in their continual motion to seek shape and eventual meaning.

The latter may be ancillary to the former. Maybe this is why we seek casual validation, or maybe it’s why some of us sit alone in a coffee shop, watching the door.