Strangers Seeking Magic

It is no secret that I wholeheartedly, unapologetically, and unashamedly believe in the existence of the aliens. If there is anything in this world of which I am more sure, I don’t know what it is. How to correctly accessorize camouflage? More sure of the aliens. Whether I adored or loathed Oz the Great and Powerful? More sure of the aliens. Whether I will one day bear Katy Perry’s miracle baby in a surgically constructed man-womb? Though I know it is tempting to assume otherwise, more sure of the aliens.

 

I have on more than one occasion sped hastily down a small town side street in a car full of clambering fellow-believers to follow what we KNEW was intelligent life hovering above the Zaxby’s parking lot. Whether it turned out to be a blimp some and/or all of the times is less relevant than Wendy Williams; my faith in the extraterrestrials has never wavered.

 

It is within this realm of thought that I sometimes comfort myself in the weekly loss of my lip balm by casually assuming that it has been thieved by the Chupacabra.*

 

I hope PLUMP by Bath & Body Works serves you as well as it did me,

 

,

 

,

 

,

 

,sir.

 

Despite the antics of the Chupa and other malicious mythical creatures onto whom I’ve placed much of my life’s culpability (I blame my hair in middle school on Oprah and Oprah alone), I’ve always longed for supernature and magic to find its way into my life. When I was a wee lad and my room would get so messy that my mum would tell me I couldn’t leave it until it was clean, I would often try my hand at magic as a quick-fix to the [literally] mounting problem. Laying flat on my back atop an undulating sea of private school polos and glittering neon pogs, I clenched my eyelids in nuclear concentration and wished for my bedroom to be miraculously cleaned. After waiting what seemed an appropriate period for whomever it was that would be carrying out my desires to do his, her or its work, I slowly creaked open my eyes, just enough to see the ceiling fan and clean ceiling.

 

“So far, so good,” I thought, pensively.

 

However, as you might imagine, the sprites or chinchillas or Julie Andrewses or whoever was supposed to set my space aright did NOT come through, and it was left to me to make something of that mess. Who knows if I ever did or not but at some point I switched from pogs to Tamagotchi, so there’s that.

 

It was sixteen years later that I found myself at the end of what felt like the most magical few months of my life, seated in a large auditorium in a black gown, a square cap upon my head, its feathery tassel swaying gently in and out of my vision, as my fellow college seniors filled the pews around me, waving to family members seated high above us in balconies. Knowing that my family was running late to the ceremony, I glanced around the lofted room, allowing the grandness of my college graduation to overcome me and bend me like a helicopter landing in tall grass.

 

I was finally here.

 

Eighteen years of non-stop schooling and I was to have a real-life degree. And where would I go next? And would I make it? And WHERE was my family??

 

And then I saw them, sitting three in a row: Danielle, Lizzie, and Katia, faces beaming with light and enchanting familiarity. We locked eyes, arms flailing in uproarious affection. My heart overflowed so instantly with love and gratitude that I began to weep, my cheeks reddening and my lips quivering with emotion. These women had become my family that semester, and we had cried together on long car rides in the hills and raged for our youth in the night and laughed enough to move the trees, and we had arrived together at this moment. From having known each other as amicable acquaintances at the semester’s inception, we had become the descendants of a self-created family tree. I was taken aback by the severity of affection I was feeling in that moment. “My family is here,” I thought, drying my moistened cheeks.

 

And that’s when I realized that magic had indeed come into my life.

 

For if there is

 

magic

 

to be found in the world today,

 

it is surely

 

when two strangers

 

become

 

friends.

 

 

And all the wizards and mermaids and soaring phoenixes in all the skies couldn’t compete with the magic we had created that endless autumn.

 

And so the night came, and the night went, and we fought recklessly in the name of forever against age and the years and the passing of time until dawn made us stop, and I graduated from college, and I moved back to Saint Cloud, and my life ended and my life began, and I was finally found and I was completely lost, and the world opened itself up as an expanding wonderland, and the world closed in as the smallest cell on the block, and the magic is near and the magic is far and the magic is hiding in that blackberry bush at the edge of the field. And we seek it until we find it and we wield it like the legends of old.

 

And still we seek.

 

_______________________________________________

 

*Writer’s note: the Chupacabra is a rumored-as-fake-but-definitely-one-hundred-percent-real jackal-like creature that inhabits much of South, Central, and Southern North America and sneaks around at night and sucks the blood of goats and other livestock and everything you love and is probably in your backyard on Tuesdays and Thursdays, if not Wednesday mornings, as well.

 

And no it’s NOT just a hairy vampire, you Twilight-obsessed freaks.

 

(jk, love you Pattinwart.)

 

#TeamEdward