Considerations

[wolven7]

I've probably touched on it, before, the idea that something is only magical if it is unexplainable. That, if there can be a causal chain, there cannot be wonder, awe, mystery.

I'm incoherent on this subject, right now, but I want to say that this idea seems somewhat ridiculous.

We hide, and mask, and occult, because no one wants to know that their secret most hidden desires, that for something more, something Special, is at teir finger tips, is at their waist-side, because then what is there to reach for? What is there to work for? Everything, ever.

But if it is only a dream, a wish, a hope, a cold-sweating nightmare fear that drags a scream from our deepest places and slits its throat in ours, then we can blink it away, with the day. We can drink the coffee, see the sun, and shake our heads, and pretend that that buzzing hasn't been with us, all day, like multitudes whispering, reminding us of our dreams, like Legions howling, subaudible, resonating our bones. If it isn't real, then you don't have to confront your feelings about it. You don't have to fire your perceptual apparatus, and integrate your entire sensorium, attune it to all falvours sof input, and actually interpret what you encounter. It's not real.

You don't have to.

It's not real.

Comments

[renatus.livejournal.com]

... This just gave me shivers.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Thank you; there'll probably be more to come.

[renatus.livejournal.com]

I don't know whether to be excited or afraid. *L* It feels like you just held a tuning fork next to my brain and it was exactly the right resonance.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

The more reactions like that, elicited in everyone, by everyone, the better.

Thank you.

[unknownbinaries.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's real. Maybe it isn't.

Maybe none of it is. I'm not sure anymore. Things are working better, yes, but I have never had to actually face a nightmare that didn't dissipate with the light. I don't fear much on that level anymore, and it's not bravery. It's doubt.

We joke, I tease you, but I do wonder. Where are your Legions? Why does it all seem so painfully, irritatingly, constrictingly normal?When did I/we become so...human?

[wolven.livejournal.com]

I see this place as a side-quest, if you want to know the truth. A part of the over-all story, but with Different goals; as such, we are without some of the resources we would have, otherwise, or at least without a direct connection thereto. But I think the goal of this sidequest is to try to change that.

But that's me, and I'm... not all here, right now.

Butterflies

[raidingparty.livejournal.com]

are also awesome.

Re: Butterflies

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Fractal-winged, especially.

Re(2): Butterflies

[dndgameofgame.livejournal.com]

Trying again. I was trying to make a point about the mundane being awesome/awful, but I'm not sure I agree with myself anymore.

While clapping your hands is mundane, a thousand people clapping their hands is awe-filled(->awe-full?), or (yanking from a movie I've since forgotten) the clapping of one's hands disturbing a field full of previously-resting butterflies, or...

The mundane no longer has the quality of awe because of either an ignorance of the inherent awe in the considered subject or a full comprehension of the subject that limits the resulting awe.

Making a game-saving catch ten feet in the air in the outfield by jumping and banking off the back wall has the quality of awe.
Summoning spirits for the five hundredth time to restore my youth and beauty, less so if I've gotten used to it.

"Magic" is just another word with as many meanings as speakers. We pursue the unknown and, by extension, awesome/awful in regards to magic because it holds new information and, by extension, new ways of shaping our awareness and the universe.

And a small mental jump there, is it easier to step one foot to the left, or get the universe to move one foot to the right?

Re(3): Butterflies

[raidingparty.livejournal.com]

Drat... can't dual log. This was me while I was also writing the latest episode of Jade Dragon.