Sometimes it isn’t whether the magic is there. Sometimes it isn’t the mood or the mould that broke. The day spent dizzy and sickly, the consequences firmly camped out in my flesh, head split and mind pursuing strange angels and odd furies. The late afternoon dozed away, emptied like payday pockets, pain buying round after round for every ailment. The heart beats on, weak and sad and all but certain the end is near. The night falls fast, dim lit rooms, all cobwebs and corners and nowhere to turn. Fingers dripping with symbols, blood sizzling with spells, the truth is the magic doesn’t want me anymore.
Skill doesn’t wait around for permissions. You learn which shots to block, which strikes to slip, which blows to step into. You might not feel up to the fight, you might not want it more, but once it’s on you you know just what to do. So the words don’t want you, so the magic has abandoned your rotten little heart. The ghost gives up, but the body still makes you do the work. The meat understands it doesn’t have eternity. It’s the real it recognizes, let it do its thing.
Someday maybe I will feel it again. That thrill of recognition, the blush of creating as the spirit moves me. The surprise of love in another’s eyes, some attention that doesn’t beset like affliction, the present running downhill. But now it is only the enchantment of anxiety, another evening of the sad old madman banging away on the pots and pans of the improbable. A wee small Who infinitesimal upon this ephemeral flower putting all his lungs into this ugly yopp. Light a candle, burn a bush, say your piece. Turn the day over and begin it all again.