Magic Is A Rebellion

Sometimes I set it aside, the magic. Not on purpose, not consciously. I set it aside out of pain, or doubt. I set it aside to drink in the mundane for a bit. Because, and few tell us this much less prepare us for it, magic is exhausting. Because magic is a direct reflection of our own power. And that’s always one part exhilarating and one part terrifying. So, I set it aside sometimes. I place it in a box in the garage, all taped up and labeled, “Magic,” with a red cautionary skull and crossbones so someone doesn’t open it unaware of the dangers it contains.

I can’t always own my own magic. But I’m not sure if I’m ever unaware that it’s sitting there in the dark garage like a box of forgotten fireworks. 

Magic is so often misunderstood. It’s a story frequently told with displacement. The magic arrives mysteriously from outside of us. From a “witch” in the woods, at the boundaries, the interstices of society. Magic is the outsider. The widow. The stranger in the night. Magic is an outlier, the exception. Magic is a moment, a bright light that’s brief and indelible but singular and unreliable. 

Magic, I think, has been detrimentally displaced as something other than normal, something other than ordinary. And I do think it’s extraordinary; it’s just time to take it back from the fairytales, from antiquity, from an idea that magic arrives entirely separate from us, entirely unwilled and unwanted. When I think in reality, magic is as critical to our existence and as needed every day as water, as bread. We’ve just misunderstood magic for so long it’s nearly imperceptible to us. 

Magic is life. Life is magic. I’ve known this in my bones since I climbed out of my window as a little girl and watched the stars from the roof of my house. My back against the brick chimney, my family asleep in their rooms below me, and the infinite expanse above me, reminding me of how insignificant and how unrepeatable I am.

This moment, this night, this tiny little heart beating away, all this will never happen again. Not in this way. Not with this particular soul seeing out through these particular eyes. Never. Again. Just this once. 

And also, just as equally, throughout time there have been an infinite number of tiny little hearts who find their way in wonder to the roof of their house alone at night to marvel at the sea of lights above them. An infinite. 

And that paradox, that contradiction of both my singularity and of my insignificance–that’s where the key to magic rests. Right in the middle of those two co-existing truths. Magic is making a life right there on the bridge between the two. 

Magic is making a life between the two truths that I have never happened before and that I will never happen again. It’s a miracle that I exist and my entire existence is just a forgettable blink in the eye of time. I won’t shine in the sky for future little girls to look up to from their perch on the roof and remember. I won’t send out this impossibly unique frequency of myself across the universe throughout time. One human being is not a star, or a constellation, or a planet. One human being cannot become a tapestry of humanity. And that’s how we’re blessed. In being human, in being just this one particular soul seeing out through these particular eyes. We only get this one chance to find the box of forgotten fireworks and remember what power, what magic resides in us. 

We have all this agency to create. To do with our brief lives as we see fit. We have so much responsibility to the potential of our time here. I owe it to that little girl who sat on her roof at nights, alone, in awe of the light above her, to own the magic I’ve always known in my bones. Magic is innate to me. 

For me, magic means not only accepting, but also loving and standing up for the outlier, the stranger, the “witch,” the outsider, the woman in the wilderness, and celebrating the rebellion that this part of me has always signified. Magic means being rebelliously all that I am.

The rebellion of normalcy, the rebellion of keeping calm, the rebellion of being the kind of good that someone else defines for me, the rebellion of beauty according to eyes not mine, the rebellion of a “fulfilled life” as judged by any other soul but my own, the rebellion of timelines, of due dates, of what success looks like or what divorce means, a rebellion of being sexual, of being a commodity, of being available to anyone else but me, a rebellion of saying how I can dress this body, move this body, celebrate with this body, revel in this body, come alive in this body, fully express this singular frequency of myself in this body. 

I love the rebellion of magic; magic is a rebellion of what’s expected. It’s a rebellion of the status quo. Magic is what happens when true power is restored. Magic is when we finally remember that life has always been about reclaiming it. 

With only more love, 
M.