Knowing Magic: So Sad and Oh So Tragic

I have an inclination that this may be a prolific entry for me.  Coming from some depth of sudden, bursting emotion erupting from a place long dormant and tapped but recently, a place thought exhausted and desolate, barren as a desert, I have struck the metaphoric oil of euphoria and passion once grasped in my childhood. 

There is this word called magic.  There is its companion word miracle.  Perhaps companion for me simply because I grew up in a house of atheists and fear, the one possessed by my father, the other possessed by my mother.  As such, what I felt when I heard my father condemn God was my mother grow a slight paler look, as if she had once believed fervently, been swept up in the heady passion of love at a young age, and now found that a ground of difference between them so surmountable to youth had never been even approached, no foothold even gained, as it is quite clear from observing any Jennings’ kin that our stubbornness and drive pushes us to believe we’re right.  We all share the same trait, it is only true in a rare few of us that we are as right as we think we are….or perhaps, ironically, we maintain the same ratio to megalomania and failed thought and all that changes is the relative number.

Nevertheless, there is this word called magic and in my mind, a companion word called miracle.  In my personal opinion, magic is something that flows between us all, that blesses us, keeps us alive despite the odds, that has given us our breath in the first place.  The miracle is simply a clear manifestation of this, a sort of momentary lapse in God’s subtlety that bursts like a firework before our eyes and fills our hearts with awe and sudden hope.  What bothers me is that the miracle is what we recognize, and the magic is what is right there constantly, ever nourishing and filling us with optimism, guiding us in ways we don’t even know so that we endure….and yet we do not see it, do not recognize it, barely appreciate our very existence and worse, do not appreciate the existence of others.  I suppose how then can we appreciate another’s life if we can’t appreciate or understand our own. 

There is a false magic in my definition as well.  A black magic.  It is the magic of poor instinct, of misconstrued feelings, of excitement and wonder at something that is less than exciting and wonderful, a something that we link ourselves to for the wrong reasons…or which we link ourselves to for the right reasons ignoring the wrong which we, in our youth, will surmount.  I have dated girls who don’t want children, I have dated across insane distances, I’ve dated girls with no ambitions that unite with mine even in the slightest.    Ironically, my greatest ambition is to find the one that makes me whole, who can satiate my unbridled love, who can make me elated inside again like a child.  I find that I have as of late dated girls who have been less this, but have been interested in me, and I find all women, most people in general, beautiful, and so invested myself in them only to lose out when our differences became too much for them to surmount.  And understand, it has always been them.  Their problems.  Their difficulties with the entire situation.  Their insecurities and fears began to manifest as a paranoia that I had become complacent when I was simply just satisfied and secure.  Indeed, the early desperate hunger to invest time constantly in a human being dissipates out of complacency for some, but for me it is never this.  I’m never complacent about anything.  I’m burning.  Constantly burning.  And all that happens is the fire becomes controlled, harnessed, and directed at the best of times instead of constantly, with a ravaging fervor that only exhausts itself and leaves everything charred and growing cold…embers the last remnants of a heat and passion now gone…extinct.

This entry, I’m starting to decide, may be more ironic in its prolific nature, as my thoughts are scattered and fragmented right now, they are under duress.  Yet, my malledict soul refuses to silence itself, it will not be mute, and so it continues to wail in indiscriminate directions, at any ear that will listen or hear….at any mind whose door is but ajar….at anything.  At everything.  It is a siren call I am upon right now….it is my youth tolling out one more sonorous song of sorrow, pleading with the world to be heard and brought to the side by warm, soft hands and caressed properly.

Oh certainly I am strong.  I am strong because I will not forget the magic and I owe it.  I am a man of debts and repayment.  I am a man who never forgets the good or the bad deeds done, an eternal memory, a vast heart, a deep mind and faith….but only possessing a shallow trough to poor my boundless feelings out into.  I further possess a vessel that is both infinite in its capacity and constantly strained….it will stretch to hold as magic has granted it, but it is ever ready to burst and wants nothing more than just a little less….a symbiote, a second half to pour a half of this wondrous passion into so that both may be fulfilled and ever peaceful and yet burning inside like stars.

Am I not alone in this?  Is this the same feeling passing between us all but everyone else is stronger than me and can contain it better?  They do just go on and endure?  I feel like I’m something more than human, my delusions of grandeur are fantastical and ridiculous, and my own self awareness is so keen that I’m in constant paradox flux between the two ideals, waiting for the juxtaposition to end and a hegemony to come into existence.  Is this, complicated and ornate as it sounds, what we all realize and are aware of?  Do I just know the right words to use?  I don’t think I can be that brilliant that so much that I desire slips through my fingers continually no matter what tactics I employ.  Although, I am severely hindered by my morality, by my desire to be nothing short of genuine…perhaps to the point of sufferage.  I know I have the potential to be Anthony Hopkins or Brad Pitt in "Meet Joe Black," that not quite real wonder that lands the beauty and says the poignant lasting things that others recognize as a great life while still remaining humble enough to live each day to aspire for something greater.  But everyday that passes I take blows that others seem to shrug off as nothing and I become more like Jeffrey Tambor or Marcia Gay Harden, giving everything everything everything I can just to earn the love of someone who will look elsewhere anyway.  There is no answer to this I believe.  Thomas Wolfe, how you capture me in all my primordial glory and give me a tragic ending that at least will be read again by others.  I have read my life out and felt in that moment, a power to fulfill and justify another’s existence…that of Eugene Gant.  Who will justify mine?

I have been rereading thanks to a bit of inspiration, my beginnings.  I have mentioned to many that I have changed a great deal…and I feel it has been for the worse but for the social betterment of all mankind.  I have man

aged to wrap a chokehold around my passion so that it doesn’t exert itself with as much force as in my spastic youth….where everyone saw me laugh and yell and flail about with much more frequency than today.  Now, today, I am far less than I was then….I’m careful and calculated and hesitant and somewhat fascinating in certain aspects and quite utterly despicable in others.  Despicable mostly to myself.  I love myself.  I hate myself.  I love what I am capable of and what I attempt to do, I hate what I feel I must relegate myself to when I must exert so much force to nothing but brick walls and empty alleyways filled with darkness and devoid of emotion. 

And it’s all worse…I only seem to really ever get halfway to the utter tragedy.  The utter tragedy is that there is boundless emotion there and a constant recognition of magic expended in youthful glee by wonderful people all around the world lighting up every single second and building fascinating bridges that will be torn asunder by their own weak will and the weak wills of others, the fickle nature of their souls, the hurdles within themselves that cripple them when they attempt to pass them.  And then it goes.  It goes away JUST like in me.  I do not get the satisfaction and happiness of being solely the source of failed magic, of expended energies dissipating into the abyss.  It is the fate of thousands unaware of how to express that this is what is happening to their lives…it has been caused by me and they have done this to me as well.  We are humanity…a tragic magic….a power that will only destroy until we find a way to truly….understand each other.  It is not the understanding of each other that most people seek, the knowing of another person inside and out.  It is impossible to do so….you cannot finish each other’s sentences constantly….you can only know what is told you and even that is based on the faulty knowledge about ourselves.

What we must understand is that the smallest brushstroke of a word, that a momentary moment of kismet magic can utterly destroy when it is denied, rebuked, or retracted without caution or care.  There is absolute strength in the magic that runs between us, but there is none within our own frail bodies and hearts….so we constantly feel the wounds shatter us and constantly manage to continue on….we survive because the magic tells us we cannot go yet. 

I do not believe God is watching us with judgemental eyes.  No no.  When I look to the sky I see pleading blue eyes staring down…saying "Please, no.  This is not what you are meant to do to each other.  Do you not see I didn’t make you, I made you all.  We are all intrinsically connected by a magic greater than ourselves….we want to deny these bonds because others deny them, consciously and unconsciously….but we cannot perpetuate this cycle.  It is breaking us more…we break ourselves more by trying to break from others so.

When I lost a certain girl to Canada back several months ago, something that she had nurtured back into life was stung again badly.  It was like bringing a child into the world and watching it suffer the pain was so great.  It is unbearable.  I knew then that her idle fascination with this man was ridiculous, he disagreed with her on the fundamentals of her life….or at least as she expressed them to me.  Yet still she persisted.  There was a magic to him she thought….some power he had that she wanted to partake in as if he was a God and she a mere mortal and it disgusted me that something like that could be.  It was no way to look at a person.  Admiration is different than worship and this was not admiration, this was downright blind faith…ugly, stupid, silly faith.  The kind of faith that some have for God, creating bad names for all those God worshippers of much better, humbler, and more noble stature.  It was the faith of showmanship.  It was convulsing in the streets, screaming names and praises and yelling to the world…it was about being recognized as special.  If to be infamous is to be special, then special such people are.

There was a profound connection with her, I cannot deny it.  I did not, despite what some might say, love her like she loved Canada.  And I could see this and could do absolutely nothing to curb her desire for him over me.  Nothing.  My reason was useless.  She lied and manipulated me and him both in an attempt to conceal the new fascination….I think perhaps she was afraid that she’d have to recognize that she had used me poorly and did not want that and hoped that an attempted reduction of time spent talking with one another would cause me to fall apart….and in many ways I did.  I did because I knew what the truth was.  She denies it to this day but she’s lying to herself.  I know how to do it, I have done it in my past….lied completely to myself so that I wouldn’t ever let my guard down enough to admit my tragic flaws…but I have had them. 

I did start looking while Kate and I were having problems.  I didn’t until after I recommended that she might want to see other people since she seemed disatisfied.  After that, I felt hurt that whatever we had had become less than it seemed it would always be…and I heard the death knell of our relationship ring a far way off.  I did not invest all my energy as I had in the past….I spent much of my time turning to endeavors I trusted to satisfy me fully…movies, books, writing, games….and I failed her in many ways by doing so.  Because I was stupid and selfish and not strong and hurt.  And such is the viscious cycle of things….

There is one justification that does not apply to Kate, however.  It applies to Canada.  There is a point of no return, where forgiveness and benevolence and willingness to endure pain and suffering to try and maintain something must cease….or perhaps, to better satisfy her own sense of right, that my weakness in being unable to forgive her for abandoning me when she did for her own pursuit only to come back to me when her infatuation ended is not appropriate for a relationship to contain.  I cannot be her friend because I am too human right now….I was stronger when she first met me….I don’t know.

I am filled with the same magic as the world.  As everyone is.  And I see it flowing from me, to you, to everyone, and back in me and thus we are all interconnected and our beliefs and desires, though different, must be respected and tolerated for what they are….not stomped upon.  Speak fervently of your own passions and wants and whims and wills, speak fervently about such things and even, if you must, speak shallow condemnations on other beliefs but do not tell people they are wrong.  Not REAL people…do not use names, do not point….please…God is watching you.  He made us all.  He breathed life into us, he did not do so to start us sucking each other’s breath from our very lungs. 

And all the lines here discussed are fine ones.  There is a line between embracing someone and humiliating them, the line slightly off kilter and muddled.  Our lives are built upo

n a single foundation, that we must all adhere to a tandem social contract….we must not expect everyone else to adhere to the one we have designed in our own heads.  We must walk forward and shake hands with one another, discard assumptions, and discuss openly our expectations of each other and what we intend to do with one another.

I would like to find someone perpetually kismet.  Deeply moving, who is deeply moved.  Who is unbridled in passion or at least wishes to be and tries.  I wish to find someone like me.  Really like me….who recognizes it.  I have found a few that I keep in my life in various shades and who knows whether certain futures may be secured in them.  I’m very unsure of myself right now…of my future…of what the world has in store for me.  But I will endure it.

I wish this could go on.  And then again, I don’t.