Seeking Magicians

Magic - from Old Persian magush: magician, from the Proto Indo European root magh: to be able. To have power.

The one who is able: the magician.

I know magicians.

Some of you -

I've been with your magic.

I could describe it, maybe, as color, if I could make color you could breathe.

We could go to a forest, I could wrap each branch in ice, then shine sun until water runs along the bark; when the ice cracks open or if I could roar quietly, then maybe I could offer you its sound.

I could tap parts of my chest it's circled and slept in, where I go to smell bits of its breath caught under grass in the morning. I can feel it. It is real.

I want you to believe in it.

I know some of you don't.

You might find it easier if I could describe it more concretely, but words shave it down.

You are able.

Solving the riddle, speaking the incantation, making dead eyes open, those are good and needed things.

I want to do all of that and more - things we haven't tried or even thought of

and

those things aren't your magic. Not the way I see it.

The sentence is most complete when it's unqualified.

You have power.

You're magic.

Maybe.

It's also possible you don't - I don't know all of you. Maybe you're un-magical. Maybe I've got it all wrong.

Or, maybe you've been working hard at having power over things, and being able to do things; there are countless ways to have power and no magic. Maybe it takes up all your energy. Maybe, unfed, your magic has grown thin,

in which case we are very much alike.

I want to feed it.

Words shave it down, but all the same, if you're willing at all, I'd like us to call out

to each other's magic.

We'll hum and click to lure it close - what's the harm in trying? Whatever comes to feed from our palms, let's believe in it. If it licks between our fingers we will say it exists

Because I want it to persist, I want us to persist in it.

I want us to devote ourselves to powers that haven't been named and commodified, that don't get us hired or elected, that refuse to be assessed and owned. Out loud it sounds like a ridiculous idea - trust magic, right now, despite everything. Let's do it anyway. Because the system we've been sold is terrible and there's something that lives underneath it.

An ability, a power. A magic. I want it. Let's choose it

together.