There is magic in each footstep. Chaos lies in small, isolated pockets, trapped in lines of contrast between solid things, in the dead spaces in the distances between the living. Opening one’s eyes to glimpse this endless possibility in madness would require setting aside, temporarily perhaps, the concrete nature of the present situation, the present perspective. For once I realize how difficult this is. I had forgotten, until coming home to Kansas, that not everyone has had the opportunity to flex and train world views (nor does everyone wish to). In static living situations, experience is continually colonized by homogenizing social forces — continually but not continuously. A person can be Christian but have moments of doubt and rebellion that enable glimpses through the veil and into reality. Little wonder that doubt is forcibly repressed. It is a tool of the status quo. Adopted by an overactive superego, this repression can hold back progress indefinitely.

Magic is blocked by fear and apathy and clarity and temptation and difficulty. It requries effortless strain to contact, a surrender to the senses and a release of self to the universe. The more I stay within four walls, surrounded by other structures with four walls, the more I doubt my own capacity to contact magic. How then is the ordinary person to go beyond the self?

My problem is lack of humility and lack of faith in humanity. To lose oneself in Ravel, that is magic. To struggle against manic-depression, that can yield magic as well. To love simply, in a most ordinary way, well, that is no less than magic. Much of this is beyond my experience; fortunately, my reminder is the existence of other people — people with whom I interact in ways that remind me of their depth and vitality, steeped in a necessary ignorance which makes them all the more vital. No one lacks these depths, but sometimes I can forget to look.

My way is adventurous but crude: to look for magic “out there.” If I were able, I would find magic right here, in every footstep, and each rising of the sun would yield endless adventures. I’m not quite there yet. Instead I must struggle constantly, in hopes that I can see the sun rise anew one day.

I’m a bit lost right now: sad, mostly, that magic creates change, and sad at the tragedy of ephemerality. Once gone, I cannot truly find home because we grow apart. The trade-off is new loves and new homes, but in the long run, they, too, are phantoms. What is real? Only the magic? It is tempting to step off this road and lose myself in some seemingly static aspect of magic, putting down roots and finding some stable way to live life. Only, I won’t let myself, yet. I know too much, and it damns me. I just don’t have enough willpower yet, and that can damn me too; but out of those two options, there’s only one way to go.

What is the difference between mere survival and true survival? What separates the homeless beggar from the rat who lives contentedly alongside him? Magic, perhaps. Self-perceived quality. The struggle for survival has a meaning beyond mere self, beyond Darwinian selection. I wonder if there is a way for people to discover this meaning in everyday life, to peer into the hairline cracks in the skin of ordinary reality — chaos in order, the uncollapsed waveform. Out in the massless, formless, raw stuff, there’s overwhelming power to be had. Too easy to think that once it’s been organized and managed into a fixed situation — a status quo, a Past, dogma or laws — that it is power personified. The power is in continuous reclamation of magic and power in the chaos.

Is it worth seeking? Yes.

Is it worth the price that one must ultimately pay?

That, I cannot answer.