Finding the Magic
So first of all, about me.
My life is crazy right now. I’ve almost been afraid to write a to-do list, because it would have, not so many things on it, but such large things: Write story due by the end of the month. Find criticism I will be teaching this fall. And sometimes, that makes me feel as though I can’t breathe. So I haven’t been very good at posting on this blog, and my website is out of date, and altogether I’m just terribly behind. I think the problem is that being a writer is a full-time job, and being a teacher is a full-time job, so I have two full-time jobs. And I need to try to do both of them well.
Have patience with me. I will get through this, and things will be easier, although I’m honestly not sure when yet.
But there was something I really wanted to write about today, which is a quotation that I saw on a friend’s Facebook page:
“Because there is no cosmic point to the life that each of us perceives on this distant bit of dust at galaxy’s edge, all the more reason for us to maintain in proper balance what we have here. Because there is nothing else. No thing. This is it. And quite enough, all in all.” — Gore Vidal
It was posted after the death of Gore Vidal of course, and I “liked” it, as one does on Facebook, because I think it’s beautifully written. But I don’t think it’s true.
I think that thinking of our material universe, the one we perceive with our sense, as the only thing is not only foolish, it is arrogant. As well as, if I may add, in contradiction to theoretical physics. I believe — I have always believed — that there is meaning and purpose to life, although we may not understand that meaning and purpose. I think we catch glimpses of it here and there, and I honestly think that the universe communicates it to us, if we can listen for it — if our perceptions are finely enough tuned. All my life, I’ve had a strong sense of purpose, of being here for a reason that I might not at that moment understand, but that something, somewhere, understood. The times I’ve been unhappy in my life are when I’ve gone off the path, when I’ve realized that I made a choice taking me away from the way I was supposed to go. I remember what it was like to go to law school and to feel, so deeply that it went to my core, as though I was in the wrong place, as though I had stepped off the path. The path itself feels narrow and rocky, sometimes. Sometimes it feels as though I’m walking along a gulley, or a high cliff with winds. But it feels like a path, as though I’m going somewhere.
I don’t know how to talk about this except by saying that we have instincts, and our instincts tell us these things, and we have to trust them.
I think part of my purpose in this life is to talk about magic, and to make it. Because we’ve lost the idea of magic — we feel like Vidal, in a wholly material universe that has no meaning, and that is a terrifying place to be. But we are like children terrifying ourselves with stories that aren’t true, or even very interesting. The problem with finding the magic is that I think you have to believe it’s there to find it.
That’s a bit of a rant for tonight, so I’ll leave you with an image:
